Property rights are supposed to be at the centre of capitalist economies. Ownership encourages responsibility and initiative. But many of the most important capitalist entities, listed corporations, are bordering on the ownerless.

Of course, companies have legal owners: shareholders, whose interests are represented by boards of directors. But in practice, shareholders do not act like owners in terms of exercising control consistent with the maximum long-term benefit of companies.

Ownership has become divorced from control. The problems this generates have been realised since Adam Smith wrote in 1776: “Directors . . . being the managers rather of other peoples' money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they would watch over it with the same anxious vigilance.”