Has everyone forgotten about this until the next financial implosion? Now that we will have some new blood in Congress, maybe its time to start hammering our reps. regarding these megabanks.
Does "too big to fail" = "too big to succeed"? It seems as though investors have not benefitted at all from the consolidation in the financial sector. The main benefactors have been the management of these supersized corporations.
As a CEO, if you convince shareholders that bigger is always better, get them to foot the bill for expansion by being diluted, or taking less in dividends, or paying higher interest expenses, then you can justify larger and larger salaries/bonuses for yourself and your top lackeys. It is very easy to connect these dots at the annual meeting: "look at our earnings compared to five years ago! They have doubled! I and my management team deserve a much larger piece of the pie!"
The other thing about these mega-corporations that is touted as a benefit, that seems to screw investors, is their inherent diversification. It is supposedly great, for example, that GE is into so many different businesses. When one are of the economy is faltering, another may be on the rise, therefore, investors are protected as earnings are less cyclical.
On the other hand, maybe this diversification idea simply promotes underperformance. Weaker divisions can be carried by the cash cows much longer than would otherwise be tolerable in a smaller business. If the core businesses of GE were split off on their own, the winners would grow shareholder value unhindered, the losers would either continue to underperform, outright fail, or reinvent/reorganize themselves to become winners. Either way, investors would be free to pick and choose where to place their bets, rather than park their $$ in this impossibly complex behemoth and hoping for the best.
I realize that we are capitalists at heart, and we can't afford to piss off all these megacorporations, for the very real fear that they simply move all their corporate offices to Dubai or India or wherever they are already offloading U.S. jobs in favor of cheap foreign labor. Well we're already moving in that direction anyway, so we might as well take our shot now with whatever leverage we still have, because that situation is not likely to improve over time.
Does "too big to fail" = "too big to succeed"? It seems as though investors have not benefitted at all from the consolidation in the financial sector. The main benefactors have been the management of these supersized corporations.
As a CEO, if you convince shareholders that bigger is always better, get them to foot the bill for expansion by being diluted, or taking less in dividends, or paying higher interest expenses, then you can justify larger and larger salaries/bonuses for yourself and your top lackeys. It is very easy to connect these dots at the annual meeting: "look at our earnings compared to five years ago! They have doubled! I and my management team deserve a much larger piece of the pie!"
The other thing about these mega-corporations that is touted as a benefit, that seems to screw investors, is their inherent diversification. It is supposedly great, for example, that GE is into so many different businesses. When one are of the economy is faltering, another may be on the rise, therefore, investors are protected as earnings are less cyclical.
On the other hand, maybe this diversification idea simply promotes underperformance. Weaker divisions can be carried by the cash cows much longer than would otherwise be tolerable in a smaller business. If the core businesses of GE were split off on their own, the winners would grow shareholder value unhindered, the losers would either continue to underperform, outright fail, or reinvent/reorganize themselves to become winners. Either way, investors would be free to pick and choose where to place their bets, rather than park their $$ in this impossibly complex behemoth and hoping for the best.
I realize that we are capitalists at heart, and we can't afford to piss off all these megacorporations, for the very real fear that they simply move all their corporate offices to Dubai or India or wherever they are already offloading U.S. jobs in favor of cheap foreign labor. Well we're already moving in that direction anyway, so we might as well take our shot now with whatever leverage we still have, because that situation is not likely to improve over time.
