Horney, Joshua2025-01-172025-01-172023Horney, Joshua. (2023). The impact of the prioritisation of shareholder interests under the enlightened shareholder value approach on inequality of corporate stakeholders in South Africa [Master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg].WireDSpace.https://hdl.handle.net/10539/43528A research report Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Laws by Coursework and Research Report, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023Poverty, inequality, and despair are the unfortunate truths for many South Africans. Industrial action seems to be the outlet of frustration, which has always been an expressional tool of exasperated South Africans to air their displeasure with social, economic, and political living conditions. Does the enlightened shareholder value approach share in the blame for such conditions? Does the Companies Act 71 of 2008 sufficiently provide for non-shareholder interests? Or are old company law beliefs and theories still ever-present? This article will dare to uncover exactly that, to illustrate that the common law and by extension statutory law require companies to primarily consider shareholder interests in corporate decision-making. How although the enlightened shareholder value approach adopted by South Africa is a step forward, there is still preservation of the conventional corporate legal enforcement framework. The impact of enriching those who are already financially secure under this original framework has led to the continued impoverishment of other stakeholders i.e. employees, customers, and the communities in which companies operate in as a matter of corporate law. Additionally, an investigation into the practicality of the two-tier corporate system used in Germany and its applicability in South Africa will be conducted. The aim being to extract lessons from this system that could lead to corporate law reform locally. Finally, benefit corporation statutes will be scrutinized, predominantly their application and lack of in South Africa, where same could be a source of enforcement for non-shareholder constituencies. From the outset, the author wishes to explain that the ambit of inequality, in so far as it is mentioned in the title of this piece, is reference to corporate stakeholders’ inequality, rather than the general inequality that, although is a serious issue in South Africa, is not the main focus of this piece.en© 2025 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.SHAREHOLDER INTERESTSINEQUALITY OF CORPORATE STAKEHOLDERSUCTDSDG-1: No povertyDissertationUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg