Hi all,
thanks for the interesting article and the debate.

I think the issue here has more to do with semantics and bad habit than with economics and management.
Value and price are very different things which are generally confused in economics because of some theories about efficiency and rational-decision-making.

Most of the decisions which actually create shareholder value are generally referred to as "sustainable and/or long term".
On the contrary what some directors intend to as ways to "maximize shareholder value", have very little to do with value and most to do with stock price.
Maximization of shareholder value goes together with creating long term value and sustainability, and is opposite to inflating the stock price at the expenses of the firm itself. So, should the managers create shareholders value? absolutely so! This necessarily implies creating stakeholders value as well.

Regarding shares buybacks, the only problem with these, is that managers who go for such an option should be paid less, instead they generally end up earning more.

In fact shares buybacks are the result of only two possible conditions:
1) the CEO wasn't able to find anything worthy investing in because he looked for in the wrong places;
2) the CEO wasn't able to find anything worthy investing in because no such investment exists all over the world (this one is pretty unlikely but still not completely impossible).

In the first case (the very likely one), he should admit his faults, apologize and slash his salary or even leave.
In the second case he is however giving up on part of his duties as he's gonna be less busy investing. Even if it's not his fault and it's due to force majeure, he should anyway be fair to the people who pay him and scale down his remuneration.

Best,
Luca