Killing the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs: Difference between revisions

* This is the basic modus operandi of the classic corporate raider, who does it to ''other'' people's Golden Geese for their personal benefit: Find a company that is marginal, making a small but reliable profit, buy it, then dismember it and sell off its pieces and assets for an immediate profit, killing the company in the process. Frequently justified with the claim that if the company didn't have the money to defend itself from a hostile takeover, it didn't ''deserve'' to keep operating.

* As many commentators (including [[Frank Zappa]] in the page quote) have noted over the past few decades, the tunnel-vision focus Wall Street has on next-quarter profits over any other benefit or metric has proven to be to the detriment of any public company that attempts strategic long-term planning. Companies that were trying to be the next IBM or Sears with a century-plus lifespan have been driven out of business either by sacrificing less-profitable but necessary divisions to satisfy their investors' demands for immediate dividends and higher share prices, or by having their stock prices tanked when they insist on planning and investing for the long term in defiance of their shareholders -- assuming the shareholders don't vote the forward-thinking officers out and replace them with someone more amenable to fast cash at the cost of everything else.

 

{{reflist}}