Hedge fund activists coming in could do a lot of damage – massive buybacks, big layoffs, price gouging, etc. All the stuff that falls under the umbrella of financializaton and has damaged so many other once innovative U.S. firms.
Musk is actually doing some of that with his layoffs. He’s not doing buybacks, but I could see him doing $30-$40 billion per year if Tesla should become super profitable, averaging, say, $70 billion in profits a year, as Apple had done over the past decade. For one thing, in wasting Tesla’s money to manipulate its stock price, Musk would also be increasing his proportional voting power by taking shares off the market.
Ultimately, the whole system of corporate governance in America is corrupt – not just at Tesla, but in general.
Companies where all the financialization is going on are companies that used to be innovators, like Apple and Microsoft. Intel gave in to financialization until recently. The asset stripping, layoffs, and other measures that come with predatory value extraction destroy their innovative capabilities.
LP: So Tesla is at a tipping point between continuing innovation and succumbing to financialization.
WL: Yes. It could go in that direction.
WL: Tim Cook, as CEO of Apple with its $701 billion in buybacks since October 2012, he has directed the greatest looting of a corporate treasury in history.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/theres-a-reason-why-stock-buybacks-used-to-be-illegal/ar-BB1jnuzk
Stock buybacks used to be illegal. They were deemed to be a form of stock manipulation, which they surely are. From Forbes:
For most of the 20th century, stock buybacks were deemed illegal because they were thought to be a form of stock market manipulation. But since 1982, when they were essentially legalized by the SEC, buybacks have become perhaps the most popular financial engineering tool in the C-Suite tool shed. And it’s obvious why Wall Street loves them: Buying back company stock can inflate a company’s share price and boost its earnings per share — metrics that often guide lucrative executive bonuses. As Reuters wrote recently, “Stock buybacks enrich the bosses even when business sags.”
The investment in the knowledge base that makes a company competitive goes far beyond R&D expenditures. In fact, in 2018, only 43% of companies in the S&P 500 Index recorded any R&D expenses, with just 38 companies accounting for 75% of the R&D spending of all 500 companies. Whether or not a firm spends on R&D, all companies have to invest broadly and deeply in the productive capabilities of their employees in order to remain competitive in global markets.
Stock buybacks made as open-market repurchases make no contribution to the productive capabilities of the firm.