If you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, you're worried about quarterly returns.
I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.
A corporation that is publicly traded, it has one goal: to make money. It doesn't have a soul. If it does have a soul, it comes from the people who run it.
As a pro-business Democrat, I understand the obligations of publicly traded companies to maximize returns to shareholders.
The cost of being a publicly traded stock has gone way, way up. It doesn't make sense for a little company to be public anymore. A lot of little companies are going private to be rid of these burdensome requirements.
As the founder and former chief executive of two publicly traded companies, I have had a great deal of exposure to how debt markets work.
One of the biggest problems of 'In Search of Excellence' is that it focused on giant, publicly-traded companies. There are thousands upon thousands of excellent companies. Some of them are two-person accountancies in a community of three thousand people.
As a basic matter, the fiduciary duty that the CEO and board of a publicly traded corporation owe to shareholders is inconsistent with allowing the company to be turned into a partisan political fighting machine.
