Andrew Witty was the CEO of Arthur Andersen. For the Gen Zers out there, Arthur Andersen was one of the big five accounting firms until they were found to be massively cooking the books for the energy company Enron. Enron is also largely responsible for California’s fucked “deregulation” energy market. He is a crook and United Health knew that when they put him in to head the board.
Purdue was privately held. This was the family itself being greedy pieces of shit.
And corporations are not required to only focus on profit growth. Their duty to the shareholders is to see a return on their investment. That is very open to interpretation. Companies can definitely take a longer term growth strategy or even a slower one and pump out dividends.