Why the down votes?
I'd guess that most of Reg's readership are ordinary people who don't deal with the financial world except as retail investors. They probably don't probe the workings of the real world and don't regard movies like "The Big Short" or "The Laundromat" as not very entertaining.
Financial services by their nature are parasitic. We have to tolerate them, though, because they can perform a useful function. However, you get to break over point where the tail definitely starts wagging the dog; I've personally witnessed this in action some years ago and had the revelation that companies were seen by financial engineers as entities that provide employment and make things, they exist to generate cashflow and so perceived value. Once the perceived value is created then the trick is to somehow separate that value from the company proper, usually by saddling the company with debt and siphoning the proceeds into investments, subsidiaries or other vehicles for value transfer. Bottom line is that the retail investor -- our pension funds -- get robbed.
I haven't followed this particular case at all because its just an internecine argument about how a company was dressed up for sale and where the value went. Its Tiger Shark versus Great White. Not much for the rest of us to see, really.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
