On: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, bu...

[oakwhiz]

Sounds like a gift to short sellers.

[kortilla → oakwhiz]

It should be. The entire job of short sellers is to be incentivized to ferret out bad companies.

[pigeonhole123 → oakwhiz]

Allowing fraud is a gift to speculators just as much. And criminals.

[ddol → oakwhiz]

Nationalising the corporation would delist it from an exchange, preventing stock sales.

[kortilla → ddol]

Meaning short sellers never have to buy it back.

[arrosenberg → kortilla]

That seems like the correct incentive, no? If the shorts believe a company is (e.g.) poisoning 100,000 people in a large suburb, shouldn't they profit massively if the government agrees and seizes it?

[orbz → oakwhiz]

Wouldn’t this reduce the share price, effectively baking in the externality risk?

[lmm → orbz]

It would reduce the share price of companies that shareholders thought were at high risk of committing a major crime, and create an incentive for companies that care about their share price to make it very clear that they weren't going to do crime and e.g. have policies to prevent it.