The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.
If you're long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned.
If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.
Our capitalistic scheme in the latter years of the 20th century seems to have lost its way. We've had a "pathalogical change" from traditional owners capitalism where most of the rewards have gone to those who make the investments and assume the risks to a new and deeply flawed system of managers capitalism where the managers of our corporations our investment system, and our mutual funds are simply take too large a share of the returns generated by our corporations and mutual funds leaving the last line investors - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund owners at the bottom of the food chain.
Our goal is to make General Motors the most valuable automotive company. Clearly, that is having sustainable profitability and driving great returns for our shareholders.
Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.
I have a business to run and stockholders to think about.
A lot of people love Oreos. So their manufacturer is making money. That means more dividends for shareholders.
Shipping middle-class jobs to China, or hollowing them out with machines, is a win for smart managers and their shareholders. We call the result higher productivity. But, looked at through the lens of middle-class jobs, it is a loss.
I sometimes wonder how some people can live with themselves in some of the big companies today. So many far-reaching decisions are based on how they will affect the next shareholders' meeting.
Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a perennial problem in American capitalism and became a real dilemma when America moved toward a model in which corporations would be run by professional managers who had only small ownership stakes.
In Canada, there's a surprising worship of managerialism versus ownership and wealth creation. There's a real problem in this country with believing that management is the answer to our problems.
Our progress isn't just limited to the operation. Financially, we have been performing well. United's 2015 earnings were one of the best in the company's history, and we made significant progress shrinking the margin gap with our closest competitors, strengthening our balance sheet, and returning significant cash to shareholders.
Over the next few years the boardrooms of America are going to light up with hot flashes.
I've heard people say South Africans are arrogant, that they act no differently from their colonial masters. That needs to change. It's in your business interest as an entrepreneur to form meaningful partnerships. That's how you do well for your shareholders.
There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.
I believe corporations that benefit from everything America has to offer should feel (ph) some sense of responsibility, not just to their biggest shareholders, but to their workers, to their customers, to their communities and, yes, to our country.
I am always asking myself how I can improve the lives of my customers, my colleagues, my shareholders, my family and my friends.
Corporate share prices should not be driven by political tax games. Profits, not Washington shenanigans, should be the mother's milk of stocks. And this shouldn't be a partisan political issue.
The customer is number one, the employee is number two and the shareholder is number three. If the customer is happy, the business is happy, and the shareholders are happy.
Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.
Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.
Too many companies are running their business into the ground, I would argue, by being myopically short-term focused on the shareholder.
United's 2015 earnings were one of the best in the company's history.
The activists play the balance sheet by selling a division to buy back stock and leveraging the balance sheet and buying back more stock.
