I think the point is that companies are purely legal entities, and as such, cannot feel, much less empathize, simply by virtue of them not being living things

That's nonsense. "Companies" are not something non-human, they are run by humans, who do feel, empathize, and are living beings. Without these living-being humans, there would simply be no "company".

Now how those humans that run the company behave is another thing - they are free to be greedy assholes, and a lot of them are, and some of them aren't - but that's still a human thing.