In the Dutch corporate law realm, the argument that shareholders basically "own" the corporation is made sporadically, but not often. Perhaps this has to do with the legal realities:
- that as per section 2:5 DCC, and from a property law point of view, legal entities are considered to be equal to natural persons (unless the statute provides otherwise): legal entities have rights and obligations, just like people made out of flesh and blood have;
- that a corporation is generally conceptualized as an institution, as a thing separate and apart from the shareholder base and not founded on some - implied - contractual relationship between shareholders (the latter view was abandoned during the early 1900s); and
- that we don't apply the shareholder wealth maximization norm, but instead approach matters from the stakeholder perspective (see, e.g., here).
In view of all this, it doesn't make much sense to make the argument.
Things are different, or so it seems, in the United States. Go and read this discussion between Josh Fershee (who makes the argument) and Steve Bainbridge (who thinks otherwise).
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