Abstract
In this paper, we argue that the current financial crisis was not the result of bad behaviors of practitioners or politicians regarding the neoliberal rules of governance. The author shows that, from the outset, the shareholder value oriented theory of governance was not compatible with the economic and financial context of the last two decades since his theory of governance requires restrictive hypotheses that were not met. The author analyses the discrepancy between the assumptions of the theory and the real world characterizing by mass shareholding. As a consequence, we suggest that the shareholders oriented theory has been used as an ideological screen for concealing dramatic changes in corporate control. [PUB ABSTRACT] Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po