Yes there are no laws but I always wonder about this.
If people are serious about testing this premise, why not be upfront with the investors and actually tell them that "maximizing profit is not one of our (primary) goals"?
It strikes me as daft to pick on only that. Why's it special? Greed?
Why not be upfront with investors and tell them keeping the company viable, developing new products, finding better processes, treating staff acceptably, or maintaining the environment are not primary goals?
So why fixate on profit or shareholder value? Once you act as though it is a prime directive, you necessarily relegate the others. There are going to be a lot of times in the life of a company where growth, longevity, research or a dozen other things should take priority for a time.
By not doing so, and continuing to push the continually increasing dividend, you weaken the company. Weaker and ripe for takeover, or lacking the next generation of products that might give 20 more years of profit. Maybe by showing so much greed in your pricing that your customers give up and go elsewhere.
A long lived, vibrant, profitable company is more than just a growing dividend and share price, it's a constant balancing act of all of the above. Profit is indirectly maximised as a result of that balance.
One part is especially worth quoting, from John Kay (a British economist and commentator):
"...and the more shareholder value became a guide to action, the worse the outcome. On the board of the Halifax Building Society, I voted in 1995 for its conversion to a “plc”. We would allow the company to pursue the goal of maximising its value untrammelled by outmoded concepts of mutuality: in barely a decade, almost every last penny of that value was destroyed."
Longevity would have been a better priority in that moment, no?
If people are serious about testing this premise, why not be upfront with the investors and actually tell them that "maximizing profit is not one of our (primary) goals"?