111–120 of 211 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What distinction are you making between the two?
'Consumer' is a cold, impersonal word. 'Customer' hints that there's a human on the other end. My web service client is a JSON consumer, but I'm a store's customer. It doesn't work the other way.
It's so easy for corporations to completely screw over the public, make a lot of money, then go out of business when they public wises up to it.
There are tons of examples throughout America of this. Mining companies are probably the worst.
The legal system needs to catch up this.
You can be cynical about this, and a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted given the authorship. That said, it would be interesting (healthy?) to discuss/debate the merits of the actual statements: * Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations. * Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them f…
They may be useful for virtue signalling. But none of the virtues signaled are particularly controversial.
They may be useful for developing more enlightened self-interest among investors and the intermediaries that vote their shares. But they change nothing about the governance structure of the firms. Stockholders elect directors appoint officers who run the companies.
Many of us have seen corporate "mission statements" or "core values" or "company principles" changed with great fanfare and no discernible effect on substantive corporate behavior. This is even fuzzier than that. This release announces a change to a kind of generalization of many corporate mission statements. Fuzzy in, fuzzier out.
In the end, I have to be suspicious. The only meaningful signal I read here is an open, united affront to the principle of simple shareholder primacy. In the balance of power, that behooves executives, who experience simple shareholder primacy as an accountable constraint on their discretion.
Business Roundtable is an interest group for executives. It is not an interest group for customers, workers, suppliers, communities, shareholders, or their representatives. It may choose to try and leverage customers, workers, suppliers, communities, and their representatives against shareholders. That has to be a far more delicate process when you're not the owner of a special class of stock that assures you stay in power.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Don't give me aspirational pie in the sky. Give me operational policy. See, there are three layers of decision making: vision, strategy, and tactics. You set large aspirational goals first (eg Microsoft "empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more"), then smaller component strategies ("build the a cloud provider that integrates business intelligence into everything you do"), then the concret…
Why would all of these CEOs from random companies even be in the same room? In a free market leadership doesn't exist that high, companies aren't supposed to coordinate at that level.
Note that most public companies have institutional investors as the largest component of their ownership; such investors tend to own all the major competitors.
GM: top 5 are Capital World Investors, Vanguard, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, and Harris Associates.
Ford: top five are Vanguard, BlackRock, Newport, State Street, Franklin.
Fiat-Chrysler: top five are Tiger, Harris, Baillie Gifford, Vanguard, Deutsche Bank, FMR.
Looks like Vanguard is certainly in a position to encourage the big-three car manufacturers to work together.
Intel: Tiger, Harris, Baillie Gifford, Vanguard, Deutsche Bank.
AMD: Vanguard, BlackRock, Wellington, FMR, Invesco.
Your CPU choices will make money for Vanguard.
HPE: Dodge&Cox, Vanguard, BlackRock, Primecap, State Street.
Dell: Temasek Holdings, Dodge&Cox, Elliott, BlackRock, Vanguard.
Apple: Vanguard, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway, State Street, FMR.
When you buy computers, you make money for Vanguard.
In summary, Tim Buckley at Vanguard can set up a meeting with any group of CEOs at minimal notice. He doesn't actually own much of anything, but the right of ownership for a large percentage of the USA's economy is a thing that he directs.
Or maybe it's Robert Kapito at BlackRock; same deal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of this is obviously desirable, but the explicit message is "we commit to doing good", with the implicit message being "we can be trusted to do good". The mechanisms which guarantee these promises are wholly unaddressed. For example, there's no mention of competition or its belief that healthy, fair competition brings about these things. In fact, it's distinctly anti-competitive in the fact that the leadership o…
I couldn't agree more strongly. I tend to get harshly downvoted when I bring up Google on Hacker News (since it employs a disproportionate amount of Bay Area engineers that hang out here and then get defensive about it), but no other company did I see quite the disconnect between what they SAY they aspire to and how they ACT. Google has built an incredibly strong PR brand on being the "good guys", a "not a convention…
In other words, execs said "here are our values", employees came back and said that maven didn't live up to those values and begrudgingly, kicking and screaming even, execs agreed, or at least capitulated.
It would certainly be better if employees didn't have to remind executives of the values they committed to, but having them has still been a net positive.
This new purpose stated by the CEOs of America's largest corporations is a welcome change to the corporate ethos that has prevailed in the US since the "greed is good" days of the 1980's. It is also a preemptive response to the growing popularity of politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your statement is wrong because there is no reason to believe or any evidence to support the following statement: > The point of this statement is to signal to the public, that the elite are ready to give them what they want and understand that the inequality is unsustainable. They are prepared to make concessions now and it's up to the public to take them. Corporations suddenly wanting to tackle inequality and make…
Are you suggesting I had the gullible interpretation? If not, what would a gullible person interpret this as? What action would you suggest is the appropriate one to this PR move?
Yes.
> What action would you suggest is the appropriate one to this PR move?
When these corporations put their money where their mouth is, we can start to seriously consider such statements. Until then, laughter and derision are appropriate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're serious about decreasing the importance of shareholder value, then they'll re-design executive and management compensation to be tied less to the company stock price.
I wonder if there's a way to tie the other pieces into shareholder value. ESPP is an easy way to let employees see upside when the stock does well. How could we tie serving customers to stock value? Being good partners? It may be that we can't, and therefore stock price is a bad metric focus on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The legal purpose of a corporation is to generate returns for shareholders. >Goes without saying that corporations should maximize shareholder value using legal means only. But why? This line of thinking typically assumes that people start companies strictly to make money--an assumption that I see as patently false. There are plenty of for-profit social enterprises (which is to say nothing of non-profits). For examp…
Patagonia is also a B Corp [1], and it has a legal obligation to the mission statement that you've mentioned, not just maximizing shareholder value. I think the parent comment is just snidely remarking that the C Corps that have signed the letter are still required to maximize shareholder value, or they will face legal action. I am uncertain how this letter changes the established case law regarding C Corps. [1] http…
No corporation is required to "maximize shareholder value". In fact, they cannot be because there is no possible legal standard for what constitutes "maximizing value".
B Corporations have no special legal standing. It's just a certification created by a group that tries to push corporations towards responsibility (or, more cynically, provides virtue-signalling-as-a-service). Any corporation can adopt any or all of the principles set out for B Corporations, if the changes to their charter and by-laws are approved. It is the existence of such requirements in the corporate governance documents that provides the legal requirement, not a private certification.
I took a look at the signatories. Surprisingly, Amazon and Apple are on there. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and IBM are not. https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redef... (edit: removed text accidentally pasted in)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Roundtable
They're a group of CEOs that has lobbied against union protections, against antitrust legislation, and against increased powers for shareholders over CEOs and boards. So this seems like a bit of a departure from their usual policy, unless the real goal is to transfer power from shareholders not to the general public but to the CEOs and boards.