First of all: no jail. This is civil law, not criminal.
Second: it's pretty hard not to have an excuse to do anything you want if you're the board + management. Google, and most other companies, give to charitable organisations, for example. "Now", you'll say, "they're just doing this for PR".
Maybe... But using the PR argument actually works perfectly fine for anything altruistic a company may do.
Unless management explicitly states that they're harming investors for the public good, it's almost impossible to run afoul of the law. Sick pay that exceeds the law? Important for employee retention (and PR). Match your employees' donation to any certified charity? Important to create a community (and PR).
If a publicly owned company started to contribute too much money to charity, they would certainly be subject to shareholder lawsuits and a proxy war over management.
Sick pay is easier to do because it's related to retaining good employees.
But generally, as Milton Friedman famously wrote, "the social responsibility of corporations is to increase their profits".
Defrauding investors yields jailtime more often than not. Depending on the particular case is might be a civil case, but even civil cases often result in incarceration.
I'm not going to argue with the rest of your post because your belief that a company might be doing "anything altruistic" is just sad for me, perhaps laughable for others.
First of all: no jail. This is civil law, not criminal.
Second: it's pretty hard not to have an excuse to do anything you want if you're the board + management. Google, and most other companies, give to charitable organisations, for example. "Now", you'll say, "they're just doing this for PR".
Maybe... But using the PR argument actually works perfectly fine for anything altruistic a company may do.
Unless management explicitly states that they're harming investors for the public good, it's almost impossible to run afoul of the law. Sick pay that exceeds the law? Important for employee retention (and PR). Match your employees' donation to any certified charity? Important to create a community (and PR).