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Are you sure about this? The Johnson & Johnson credo which I posted above goes directly against your claim, and so does Costco's operations (where they have resisted multiple calls by Wall Street to increase prices and reduce employee pay and benefits)

I can see that not maximizing returns can cause a storm in the shareholder meetings, but can you give a source for it being a "criminal offense" to refrain from doing so?

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Also, as swombat observed: the criteria for maximising shareholder returns long-term might be (and almost certainly is) very different to the short-term milking of the company for profit. Intuitively, a law requiring that company decisions favour maximum profit over N years would be ambiguous to the point of unenforceable.

> where they have resisted multiple calls by Wall Street to increase prices and reduce employee pay and benefits

They've been able to resist because they have demonstrated that shareholder returns are better when employees are well-paid and -treated.

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