this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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That sounds like a tough issue for government to catch. Well done, im glad that they caught the problem and fined them. Unfortunately the seem to profit around 33m before tax so this is barely any impact on their yearly profits. Its hard to decide how much to fine because I think fining them 1/4 their yearly profit is reasonable it would absolutely kill their stockprice and growth and probably severely impact their long term trajectory as a company. What do you guys think a reasonable fine is for this offense?
The fine has to be big enough to cause enough pain to the shareholders that the board of directors cares.
Let's say we set the fine to an amount that would destroy the company if levied in a single financial year, then actually leviing it over five years. Five years of poor dividend performance.
Or perhaps partial dividend forfeiture for a period of time.
The people who make the kinds of decisions that result in this kind of failure are driven by next quarter's share price, hurt that enough and they'll make the right decisions.
Either way, that particular fine is appallingly small for poisoning the general public with heavy metals.
There is another way to deal with this kind of stuff, fines may be effective. But if you want to ensure that this kid of thing doesn't happen. Look to the health and safety regulations.
Making the board / CEO criminally responsible, will achieve the the thing you want, rather than the decision makers paying out other peoples money (shareholders) which doesn't hurt them directly, make them personally responsible.
If they are found to be negligent, then it follows that they go to jail....watch how quickly this kind of thing changes.
Also make it not beholden to them continuing to work at the company they fucked up at, so if this happened and was only discovered years later, the CEO who has moved on to fuck up at another company can still be held liable.
That's way better.
I'd entirely forgotten we have that kind of option available.