True. However, fining them will impact their profits, which impacts the valuation of the company and their competitiveness (due to needing to charge their customers higher prices as you mentioned, compared to their competitors), and both will hit the pockets of the shareholders. The only thing that needs to be kept in mind is that breaking the law should not increase profits more than the punishment would decrease it, so netto it should impact their profits.
And morally it is justified to compensate the victims.
In theory sure, but in practice there are ways a company can offload this burden onto the consumers with minimal impact to their bottom line, like raising prices in an area where there isn’t any competition. Hurting the competitiveness of a major player will likely negatively impact the whole market because it will allow their competition to charge more as well. Most likely it won’t impact large shareholders whose portfolio is diversified enough, as they can own stake in all players on the market simultaneously, it might even be good for them; less competitive market -> higher margins, shareholders with equal stake in T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T win regardless of any one company’s performance.
True. However, fining them will impact their profits, which impacts the valuation of the company and their competitiveness (due to needing to charge their customers higher prices as you mentioned, compared to their competitors), and both will hit the pockets of the shareholders. The only thing that needs to be kept in mind is that breaking the law should not increase profits more than the punishment would decrease it, so netto it should impact their profits.
And morally it is justified to compensate the victims.
In theory sure, but in practice there are ways a company can offload this burden onto the consumers with minimal impact to their bottom line, like raising prices in an area where there isn’t any competition. Hurting the competitiveness of a major player will likely negatively impact the whole market because it will allow their competition to charge more as well. Most likely it won’t impact large shareholders whose portfolio is diversified enough, as they can own stake in all players on the market simultaneously, it might even be good for them; less competitive market -> higher margins, shareholders with equal stake in T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T win regardless of any one company’s performance.