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Scientific research confirms that psychopathic figures genuinely occupy senior corporate leadership roles, and organizational behavior experts have recently identified the historical figure who established their destructive baseline behavior. The exact manipulative strategies leveraged by toxic executives in modern workplaces were executed to a devastating degree by a prominent company merchant nearly four centuries ago. This historical baseline traces back to June 1629, when the Batavia—a flagship operating under the Dutch East India Company, which is widely recognized as the world's pioneering multinational, shareholder-owned corporation—struck a reef and wrecked off the coast of Western Australia. Following the disaster, the ship’s captain and primary command staff abandoned the site on a rescue boat to seek assistance, leaving an under-merchant named Jeronimus Cornelisz as the highest-ranking official in charge of roughly two hundred stranded survivors. Cornelisz immediately consolidated absolute control by dismantling the island's governing council and replacing its members with absolute loyalists who pledged personal oaths directly to him. He proceeded to hoard the collective survival provisions and cargo wealth, marooned his vocal detractors on neighboring islands, and systematically orchestrated the execution of roughly one hundred men, women, and children under the manipulative pretext of conserving limited food and fresh water. Dr. Clive Boddy, an associate professor of management at Anglia Ruskin University, evaluated Cornelisz's documented actions against a contemporary corporate psychopathy checklist. The evaluation revealed that the 17th-century merchant perfectly matched all ten defining characteristics of a corporate psychopath, demonstrating hallmark traits that ranged from a superficially charming demeanor and chronic deceitfulness to a complete lack of personal remorse and an innate ability to deflect blame. Boddy frames the historic Batavia disaster as an accidental natural experiment in extreme leadership dynamics, showcasing how the sudden removal of societal rules allowed a single executive's psychological profile to dictate the survival of those beneath him. The specific tactics Cornelisz deployed—stacking oversight committees with blind loyalists, dividing oppositional blocks, and maintaining absolute dominance through institutional terror—remain heavily observable in modern corporate environments. Extensive contemporary research directly connects psychopathic leadership to systemic workplace bullying, professional burnout, high employee turnover, and catastrophic organizational collapse. Based on these insights, Boddy argues that modern enterprises must prioritize ethical standards and personal character far more heavily during the executive recruitment process. Although this diagnostic profiling relies on historical archives to evaluate a figure who died centuries ago, the underlying lesson remains highly relevant to modern human resources. Cornelisz's historical reign of terror was ultimately cut short when he was captured by returning authorities, tried for his crimes, and executed by hanging in late 1629. [Boddy, C. R. (2026). Asia bound: shareholder capitalism, corporate psychopathy and history’s earliest corporate psychopath. Asian Journal of Business Ethics, 15(2), 1-17. DOI: 10.1007/s13520-026-00274-y]