Imagine a parallel timeline, in which I happen to be Zelmo Zoosk, CEO of CarCorp. And suppose I have 500bn in assets but I really, really want to be the world’s first trillionaire. Suppose I have influence and possibly some degree of coercive control over the most powerful politician in the world, Roland Tramp.
I might craft a pay package to take me straight to a trillion, that at first glance seems to offer good value to shareholders if achieved. But perhaps my actual plan would be to subvert the win conditions of the bet, or modify the bet later once accepted, to guarantee I win at the expense of the shareholders or general public.
For example, if you can get effective control of the highest courts in the world, then the exact wording and conditions of the bet might not matter. Just have the courts rule that the CEO fulfilled them ‘in spirit’, ‘in principle’, or whatever. What are the shareholders going to do about it if the Supreme Court says ‘OK!’
With control of a company board, you could have them alter the agreement terms retrospectively ‘for fairness’, or rule that they were met even if they weren’t, or simply make the payment ‘as it was approved in principle long ago and has been meaningfully fulfilled in other ways’. Aim to nudge the rules a bit more in your favour every year. Or if you’re running out of time, get them to extend the bet till you win.
A suitably evil near-trillionaire CEO could use all kinds of evil, corrupt tactics to coerce the deciders of the bet to decide in their favour. You could also move the whole company to another jurisdiction where you have more control over the bet deciders.
What else? Well, an evil CEO could bribe the highest levels of government to buy lots of cars and robots, or to let inflation run rampant so that the market cap of the company goes sailing up over a ten year period due to inflation.
Doesn’t matter if you lose money on the cars and robots; as long as they are sold and as long as inflation carries the share price up, it’s still a win.
A CEO could print heaps of shares and use them to buy up other companies in exchange for equity, conglomerate style, borrow like crazy, grow the company that way. Dilute the absolute hell out of all the other shareholders knowing the CEO stake wll get boosted by a trillion later on anyway.
If you can ‘control’ interest rates and inflation and what the government spends money upon via direct influence/control over politicians, then you can win the bet that way. Basically use taxpayer money / suffering to ensure you win the bet.
Coming up to the end of the bet and a bit short of the goals? Use other wealth to buy robots, cars, huge options positions, whatever it takes to lock the price up high for a while.
You could sit on your hands and do nothing. If the engineers of the company happen to strike lucky, great, so do you.
You could do not much for 5 years, then issue debt/equity to buy up any new companies that are useful to fulfil the terms of your bet. Doesn’t matter how much you screw the shareholders in doing so; the focus is winning the bet.
My point is that when you make a trillion dollar bet with a half-trillionaire, you should expect them to cheat and you should expect them to use every form of influence, control, coercion or corruption that’s available to a half-trillionaire to achieve it.
(All characters and concepts in this parallel universe story are 100% fictional.)