> Execs and major shareholder should absolutely be held personally held liable.

In a way, they are. Those two groups are often the same due to incentives packages. The money lost to the fine is money not put in the earnings-per-share or R&D or whatever. That's the opportunity cost of paying the fine.

The problem from the "discourage bad corporate behavior" standpoint is that you can generate enough money from breaking the law to cover the fine and make more money than you would have had you not broken the law. Or maybe it's not a fine. Maybe it's a judgment from a civil case. Same issue.

You need to greatly increase the financial consequences to both clean out all gains the shareholders could have made from the illicit behavior and make it harder for the company to be competitive in the marketplace going forward.