Reply to post: Re: Because debt is grossly under-priced and money has to go somewhere.

What's that? Uber isn't actually worth $82bn? Reverse-gear IPO shows the gig (economy) is up

Speltier

Re: Because debt is grossly under-priced and money has to go somewhere.

Companies tend not to have financial cushions, because corporate raiders will buy the company and bury the depleted husk under debt. Same would happen to people saving for retirement if the hedge fund raiders could figure out how to manage that. For companies, this boosts the concept of stock buy backs with the spare cash-- not only puffs up the CEO bonus by boosting share prices, but also lets the CEO keep milking the bonus train for longer by keeping raiders from causing c-suite unemployment.

The raider mentality in America reinforces enbiggening companies so that raiders can't touch them. Any smaller company that manages to gain a strong brand or a pile-o-cash(r) will be bought and drained of life (either by a raider, or by the giant company leading the pack). A side effect of this is that, in America at least, you can't successfully break up a big company. That big company will just be replaced by another big company in the same market niche... and if you dream of wiping all the big companies in America out, that just means a company in some other country will take up the role.

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