Shareholders throw the book at Apple for ebook price-fix drama Apple is once again being sued by its own investors – this time they're irked by the ebook price-fixing brouhaha. The lawsuit alleges the iThing maker part in the scandal harmed its reputation and thus shareholders' investments. According to a court filing obtained by journalist Jeff Roberts, Apple chief Tim Cook, executive …
They're just pissed off because Apple got caught. Shareholders like that are always on about how a corporation must put profits ahead of everything else. They elect boards of directors whose views are to put profits ahead of anything else. Then they get all pissy when the laws and ethics they trample on their way to bigger profits rise up and say "no, you can't do that".
Now if only there was a way to put the shareholders on trial for getting what they asked for.
I suppose it may well be possible to bring a class action law suit against Apple for 'disappointment'.
The supposed hype surrounding the launch of the iPhone 6, the leaking of titbits of information, the build up and expectation, the hysteria minutes before the announcements.....
Then the depression and total disappointment when the iPhone 6 is announced, to find it has no new must have features, no new amazing thing, instead it is just an incrementally updated device.
It's like buying a car thinking it will be as good as a top of the range Audi and finding on delivery you have bought a Trabant.
But the real culprit in the e-book price fixing scandal would be the late Steve Jobs. He's the one that engaged in this scheme of corporate "vigilantism" and dragged the company he presided into it. Tim Cook, at least, is probably not as guilty in the whole thing.
Then again, maybe this will deter Apple from trying to pull such a scheme in the future. I'm only sad that the publishers didn't get punished as they deserved.
Yes, there are no winners in such a suit, except the lawyers. The "shareholders" they're representing are probably themselves, and they're trying to get it approved as a class action that would cover all shareholders.
So if they found Apple "guilty" and awarded each shareholder $1 per share, Apple's value would decrease by $1 per share for that payout. Same thing as a dividend. Except that the lawyers would take a few hundred million as "fees" for all their "hard work", so they'd end up winners and the rest of us shareholders would be screwed out of a few cents per share to pay those imitations of human beings.
The only reason this kind of shit is allowed is because judges are ex lawyers, so they generally allow these sorts of games to be played, so long as the guys who will be winners are the ones they play golf with on the weekends.
In the US (and probably to a much lesser extent in the UK) investors have the view that they are totally entitles to make money with no risk; if they make an investment that fails big-time they automatically blame someone (anyone) else and reach for the lawyers instead of admitting to themselves that they screwed up. A much better solution in this case is to simply cut their losses and pull their money out; Apple will come to heal *much* faster when their share price starts to skydive.
Shareholders sued because their divi was too low and won. Result was the company didn't take any future risks keeping the R&D money back for divi payouts and quickly withered and died in the marketplace.
The shareholders lost everything when it folded but they probably didn't ever realise they caused it.
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