The shareholders reaped a lot of benefit along the way. It doesn’t seem outrageous to have the company (the shareholders in aggregate) pay fines related to the behavior.
The challenge historically was in making fines actually large enough to disincentivize doing it in the future. If G made $100 billion because of this, would the gov’t be successful in getting a $200 billion fine? What if they got $100 billion in revenue, but an additional $400 billion in market cap? Is a $800 billion fine doable?
Historically, it seems like the answers to those are solid no’s, and after lawyers have argued it for a decade, the fines look more like $1 billion. Which skews things a lot.
Small fines probably even help them in the long run since they tame popular anger. I'd almost prefer no fines (in contrast to small fines) so people can transparently see how unaccountable they are. Ideally we can get big fines, though.
That's part of the reason why I said fines were good. They're good both because it recovers some of the ill-gotten gains of shareholders (your point), but also because it incentives better governance.
But due to agency problems, jail should be also be added on top for the most egregious violations. As an example, the HSBC execs that banked cartels should have gotten jail sentences.
