[Hopple]

We see on Dragon's Den that some investors want to get in and out pretty quickly, asking for a 3-year forecast for a new(ish) business to see if they could make a sizeable enough profit at the end of that time. However, many 'investors' have an even shorter time in which they demand a profit (albeit a smaller one), and the use of computers has driven that down to under a second.

There's some complaint that shareholders don't have binding votes on various things like employee pay, despite actually collectively being the owners of the company. I would argue that if shareholders can jump in and out of a company, they really shouldn't be involved in any decisions that could affect the long term, because clearly their interest is mainly for the short term. And if whoever bought the shares was using a computer, they probably don't even know how long they had shares in that company.

Should shareholders have to commit for a certain amount of time, in a conscious decision (no computers) in return for proper control of a company? I don't know what that minimum time should be, but perhaps different amounts of time for voting power on different types of issues - a rule of thumb could be you couldn't vote on an issue that would be set for after your share time ran out (though you can of course extend it).

[Sternumator]

There shouldn't be a minimum time because that will make people less happy about investing. If it is a private company then they should be allowed to come to any deal they want, there is no reason why the person providing finance has to manage the company as well. When you talk about computers I am guessing you are talking about publicly traded stocks, it would be ridiculous to put a time limit on those because shares are just to finance the business so who cares if people trade them, it doesn't affect the business. Also, it is a mistake to talk about short term and long term as if they effect different investors in different ways because if the long term prospects are good the share prices will rise in the short run.