The history of ‘shareholder value’

Profiles shareholder value and how it began with Du Pont, back in the 1920s, a US firm held up as an ideal of advanced management practice, who started measuring investment returns (referred to then as returns on investment or ROI), which was initially called the ‘Du Pont formula’. Elaborates, in detail, all of the relevant information regarding the formative years of this system. Concludes that the subject of shareholder value, through its rapidly‐increased use in the ‘Financial Times’ (a figure accentuates this), has reached a new level — from hardly mentioned ten years ago to currently more than once per day on average.