"Introduction" [2014] ELECD 854; in Paolini, Adolfo (ed), "Research Handbook on Directors’ Duties" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014) xv

Book Title: Research Handbook on Directors’ Duties

Editor(s): Paolini, Adolfo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781004401

Section Title: Introduction

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Introduction
Adolfo Paolini

Company directors have been the centre of attention for a number of
years, following the financial crisis that affected and still affects worldwide
economies. The role of directors is increasingly becoming a very demand-
ing one and it is safe to say that it encompasses duties which go beyond
the corporate body, of which they are in charge. This is why corporate
governance authors always talk about directors and corporate social
responsibility, and to some extent, these authors are right.
Public limited companies benefit from the fact that they can raise
capital from the general public; thus, anybody can become a shareholder
in a company, which could grow well beyond one's imagination. Such
large entities also usually have a number of customers, suppliers and
stakeholders who can be measured in hundreds of thousands. It is not
difficult therefore to think and realise that in discharging office directors
should and must take into consideration the damaging social effect that
their misconduct could cause. For an example, let us use banks, which
adopt corporate structures to perform their business (in fact in most
jurisdictions, banks can only operate as private or public companies) and
remember the long queues that formed outside some at the end of 2007
and 2008. People wanted to withdraw the little they had in their bank
accounts before the bank shut its doors. Those forming the queue were
not the bank's shareholders, they were the bank's customers wanting
to recover the fruit ...