Re: Activist Investors & Venture Captialists
What's this stakeholder thing supposed to mean? Am I a stakeholder of The Register, just for being a reader? Do I have a right to veto how much profit they're allowed to make? Can I insist that they must invest all their cash in a better forum design, rather than spending it down the pub. Or blowing it on rockets...
Shareholders are owners. It's their property. And they should have a right to do what they like with their stuff, in compliance with the law and absent a court order. The company has legal duties towards its staff of course. And fewer towards its customers. But if the customer doesn't like it, their choice is to take their money elsewhere. Again, so long as their legal rights have been met. Executive pay has bugger-all to do with them.
Until the voters tell the politicians to change the law, giving customers representation on the board. Then watch business flee our country, and our economy suffer.
It's all very fine and dandy saying how you'd like a share of other people's property. But if you do that too arbitrarily, you're no longer running a free economy - and people will start squirrelling their money away elsewhere. There's a lot of deeply unattractive stuff goes on in the City. But the side-effects of mustering the morality police and mounting our high horses could be quite dangerous. We've got plenty to do trying to regulate our banks for now.
Yes it's sad that the Glazers got to buy Man U for a song, them load it up with debt and make a killing. But that's because everyone else undervalued it, so they got it incredibly cheap. Very hard to regulate to stop that, and I'm not even sure we have any right to complain. Other than a general feeling that someone's getting more than we are...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
