Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two words: leveraged buyout. I'm not sure what purpose they serve other than to create debt. Working at a company that was acquired by a smaller fish with a $4 billion loan, it made things painful when cuts were constantly made to pay interest on debt. Somehow, the situation benefited the shareholders that signed off on the deal.
Well yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Company A borrows $4 billion; it's leveraged against the company they're going to buy; they buy Company B, paying out the shareholders, and B merges into A and keeps the debt. I'm having a struggle with whether this seems moral or not. B is saddled with a big debt, and employees of company B may suffer as a result of this (anything from losing bonuses or profit sharing opportun…
If you look at the top dozen economies in terms of prosperity or economic growth, you'll find a lot of different cultural approaches to that owner/operator-worker relationship, and they all have managed to generate rather spectacular results. France, US, Germany, South Korea, Japan, China, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Denmark - all have between slightly and very different approaches.
It also takes you down a road of other similar questions.
Joe loads up on his credit cards and puts his family at risk. Should that be illegal? Is it immoral? (arguably it's immoral)
Social contracts are a fascinating thing and they're essentially all-pervasive across everything people do. We go out and drive on the roads with a sort of social contract, that properly we're not going to act like maniacs and endanger each other.