By Anora Mahmudova “Large U.S. corporations spent more than $2 trillion buying back their own shares from 2009 through the end of last year. That is money that didn’t go into the economy in the form of rising wages or…
AIR IMPACT
Recognition of AIR research, opinions, and people in the media and elsewhere
Laurence Fink, Wall Street, and God’s Work
By Guy Rolnik “The letter Laurence Fink sent to clients was surprising. Well, not clients exactly. He wrote to the people with whom he invests his clients’ money – namely, the 500 CEOs of the biggest companies in the United…
Toward healthy companies and a stronger economy
By Kara M. Stein “Thank you Treasurer [Rosie] Rios for the invitation and the warm introduction. It is a pleasure to be here this morning at the Treasury Department. As always, I need to offer the usual disclaimer that the…
The danger of the share-buyback epidemic
By Paul Sweeney “The news that US companies will buy back over one Trillion dollars – that is $1,000,000,000,000 – worth of their own shares in 2015 is a warning of possible bad times. When companies buy back their own…
With two dissents, SEC proposes pay-for-disclosure rules
By Cydney Posner “This morning, by a three to two margin, the SEC voted to propose rules requiring companies to disclose executive pay for performance. The proposal comes five years after passage of Dodd-Frank, which imposed the obligation on the…
Profits are up, but wages are stagnant. This Senator has a plan
By Bryce Covert “Last week, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) sent a letter to the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about the growing trend of companies giving money to investors through stock buybacks, rather than investing in workers or equipment.”… [Click HERE…
Senator urges SEC to revisit rules and policies on stock buybacks
By Cydney Posner “Data compiled by S&P and Bloomberg shows that companies in the S&P 500 spent 95% of their earnings on repurchases and dividends in 2014, including spending $553 billion on stock buybacks in 2014. The number was $1 trillion for…
Trend pits super-rich clients against merely rich clients
By Will Ashworth “The richest one per cent are benefiting almost exclusively from share repurchases while the rest of the crowd, including many of your clients, are being hurt by this trend of maximizing shareholder value.”… [Click HERE to read…
What Apple’s gargantuan cash giveaway really means
By Rana Foroohar “Apple’s announcement today that it would increase its dividend 10.6% and give out the biggest chunk of cash to shareholders in history—$200 billion of capital will be returned to investors through March 2017—means one thing and one…
Are stock buybacks hurting the working class? US senator presses the SEC to reexamine its policies
By Owen Davis “The topic of stock buybacks is quickly moving from the financial press to the national political stage. In the first substantive congressional attention the issue has attracted in decades, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., is pressuring the Securities and…
