They can redirect capital from low-return or poor-risk activities to high-return or lower-risk ones.
For decades now, supporters of the "shareholder rights" movement have portrayed it as a disciplining device that forces tired old corporations to restructure and redirects capital to more productive areas.
They note that if it simply redirects capital from one use to another, then the number of jobs created might not be so great.What is more, public investment in green technology brings costs as well as benefits.
The US dollar rose 1% in Asian trading against a basket of currencies, raising questions about whether investors would redirect capital to higher-yielding US debt and undermine shaky emerging economies.
But if Big Oil can't redirect capital to low-carbon energy alternatives, investors will [by divesting]." BP, Shell and Total are all discussing the carbon bubble risk publicly to some extent but Chevron has refused to do.
Its authors say that to minimise the risks posed by stranded assets for investors and savers, the large energy companies need to redirect capital away from high-carbon investment - requiring them, in turn, to radically change their business models.
A strong dollar would redirect capital to worthy entrepreneurs and out of ruinous commodity speculation.
With offshore drilling costs sure to go up and with spill liabilities unlimited, oil and gas finders are already looking to redirect capital spending to onshore plays.
The idea is to redirect capital investment away from short-term speculative ventures which are high-risk, high-debt and if profitable only of value to a tiny class of investors, into "long-term productive low-emission assets and services" of benefit to the wider public, as well as generating longer-term returns.
In addition, carriers are redirecting their capital spending away from "poles and holes," or physical construction like laying fiber optic cables, and toward equipment, said Michael Ching, a Merrill Lynch analyst.
