somereallyfungi t1_jaclxsf wrote
Reply to comment by cantproveidid in As crews remove contaminated soil and liquid from Ohio toxic train wreck site, concerns emerge about where it's going. by ILikeTalkn2Myself
The board and c-suite, sure. But going after stock holders is a pretty futile idea as blame is so distributed. Norfolk Southern is an almost incomprehensible large company, in terms of ownership. The single largest shareholder is the mutual fund Vantage (in turn owned by some 30 million private investors) and they only hold about 8% of Norfolk.
HandsyBread t1_jacpvtf wrote
It’s more likely then not that most people who have any money invested into an index fund, 401k, retirement savings account owns some of the company.
somereallyfungi t1_jacrm30 wrote
There is a silver lining to this distribution, though. Norfolk could be driven to bankruptcy without a significant hit to most portfolios. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually solve the problem at hand. But, the punishment could be so severe as to actually be a deterrent for cost cutting.
HandsyBread t1_jactqpm wrote
This accident will not bankrupt Norfolk, let’s assume they had to purchase in full every single house (which won’t happen) you would be looking at $250M-1B at most, and then let’s say the total clean up cost was $1-2B. And let’s add another $500M-1B for other misc legal fees, damages, political bribes, etc. the total damage your looking at is $2-3B maybe $4B if they are able to squeeze them for every possible thing and the courts slap on additional fines. Heck even if they needed to give $1M per person to cover life long health costs, and other personal damages that would tack on other $4-5B at most.
That would just mean that they would take a loss of profits for 1-2 years. This won’t bankrupt the company or get close to bankrupting the company. And that outcome is likely to never happen, we would never see a company held responsible to this degree, but even if we did they would still be fine in the long run.
Squire_II t1_jadbf54 wrote
> That would just mean that they would take a loss of profits for 1-2 years.
5 billion isn't even a year of profit. They're spending more than that on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends this year.
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