Based on his remarks, his reception by that congregation of company secretaries and corporate lawyers should have been a tongue bath. The speech left no doubt that Atkins’s agenda aligns with corporate boards and executives, with their woke history not a consideration. Atkins built his entire disclosure argument on a 40 percent drop in the number of public companies over recent decades. So a single speech hands executives discretion to tell shareholders less, and in the same breath faults shareholders for asking more. The buck stops with them because the chairman has arranged for it to stop nowhere else.