The United States has over 4,000 corporations that are designated as public companies, and therefore are permitted to list their common shares through a stock exchange, thereby permitting the investment of money from outside sources, including, of course, individuals. While public companies divulge an awful lot of pertinent information to the public, as required by law, one of the most important disclosures which is not being done at the present time, but so needs to be done, is the full disclosure of all criminal convictions, fines so issued, and sealed deals so done with prosecuting authorities; all of which subsequently should become part and parcel of what is fairly divulged to the public in regards to these public companies, along with any current litigation that is still in process.
Further to the point, all advertising, all annual reports, and all publications issued from public companies, should as a matter of course, list every single conviction so enforced against said company, such as for pollution, financial chicanery, price fixing, and so on and so forth. Additionally, agreements so done which have resulted in a fine should be fully disclosed, as well as all those deals so finalized in which subject corporation has paid a fine in exchange for criminal charges being subsequently dropped as part of that negotiated deal. In other words, just as pharmaceutical companies are required to warn the general public as to the bad side effects of a given drug, so too, these corporations should be required to divulge fully all of their bad actions so having occurred.
After all, it is quite common for individuals to be asked as to whether they have a criminal record or even if they have been arrested as a condition for their consideration of employment with many a company. Therefore, those so considering purchasing the common stock of a given company, or seeking employment at said company, should have divulged to them, all of the convictions and all of the fines so having been imposed against a given company, along with pending litigation addressing similar concerns.
Additionally, it must be recognized that judicial law has determined that companies are considered to be defined as "corporate personhood", and therefore this is even more justification that public companies must appropriately have their feet held to the fire, and further to the point, should be held to the highest possible ethical standard, since unlike real human beings, those that work within corporations, are typically never personally held accountable for any egregiously bad behavior.
Those that invest their hard earned money, and those seeking fair employment, should have fully disclosed to them, before such investments and before such employment is finalized, who and what a given company really is, as compared to the public relations smokescreen, so often provided to the general public by badly behaving corporations, that all is well and good, when all is definitely not. Those that are criminals complain again and again, that they have to keep on paying for that which they did, previously, over and over again, through the discrimination that they must deal with day-by-day by virtue of that conviction. Why then, would we as a country, permit corporations, to not have to walk the very same line?