首页
登录
职称英语
It’s widely known that more than half of all corporate mergers and acquisiti
It’s widely known that more than half of all corporate mergers and acquisiti
游客
2023-12-03
21
管理
问题
It’s widely known that more than half of all corporate mergers and acquisitions end in failure. Like many marriages, they are often fraught with irreconcilable cultural and financial differences. Yet M&A activity was up sharply in 2013 and reached pre-recession levels this year. So why do companies keep at it? Because it’s an easy way to make a quick buck and please Wall Street. Increasingly, business is serving markets rather than markets serving business, as they were originally meant to do in our capitalist system.
For a particularly stark example, consider American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s recent bid to buy British drugmaker AstraZeneca. The deal made little strategic sense and would probably have destroyed thousands of jobs as well as slowed research at both companies.(Public outcry to that effect eventually helped scuttle the plan.)But it would have allowed Pfizer to shift its domicile to Britain, where companies pay less tax. That, in turn, would have boosted share prices in the short term, enriching the executives paid in stock and the bankers, lawyers and other financial intermediaries who stood to gain about half a billion dollars or so in fees from the deal.
Pfizer isn’t alone. Plenty of firms engage in such tax wizardry(巫术). This kind of short-term thinking is starting to dominate executive suites. Besides tax avoidance, Wall Street’s marching orders to corporate America include dividend payments and share buybacks, which sap long-term growth plans. It also demands ever more globalized supply chains, which make balance sheets look better by cutting costs but add complexity and risk. All of this hurts longer-term, more sustainable job and value creation. As a recent article on the topic by academic Gautam Mukunda in the Harvard Business Review noted, "The financial sector’s influence on management has become so powerful that a recent survey of chief financial officers showed that 78% would give up economic value and 55% would cancel a project with a positive net present value—that is, willingly harm their companies—to meet Wall Street’s targets and fulfill its desire for ’ smooth’ earnings. "
Some of this can be blamed on the sheer size of the financial sector. Many thought that the economic crisis and Great Recession would weaken the power of markets. In fact, it only strengthened finance’s grip on the economy. The largest banks are bigger than they were before the recession, while finance as a percentage of the economy is about the same size. Overall, the industry earns 30% of all corporate profit while creating just 6% of the country’s jobs. And financial institutions are still doing plenty of tricky things with our money. Legendary investor Warren Buffett recently told me he’s steering well clear of exposure to commercial securities like the complex derivatives being sliced and diced by major banks. He expects these "weapons of mass destruction" to cause problems for our economy again at some point.
There’s a less obvious but equally important way in which Wall Street distorts the economy: by defining "shareholder value" as short-term returns. If a CEO misses quarterly earnings by even a few cents per share, activist investors will push for that CEO to be fired. Yet the kinds of challenges companies face today—how to shift to entirely new digital business models, where to put operations when political risk is on the rise, how to anticipate the future costs of health, pensions and energy—are not quarterly problems. They are issues that will take years, if not decades, to resolve. Unfortunately, in a world in which the average holding period for a stock is about seven months, down from seven years four decades ago, CEOs grasp for the lowest-hanging fruit. They label tax-avoidance schemes as "strategic" and cut research and development in favor of sending those funds to investors in the form of share buybacks.
All of this will put American firms at a distinct disadvantage against global competitors with long-term mind-sets. McKinsey Global Institute data shows that between now and 2025, 7 out of 10 of the largest global firms are likely to come from emerging markets, and most will be family-owned businesses not beholden to(感激)the markets. Of course, there’s plenty we could do policy-wise to force companies and markets to think longer term—from corporate tax reform to bans on high-speed trading to shifts in corporate compensation. But just as Wall Street has captured corporate America, so has it captured Washington. Few mainstream politicians on either side of the aisle have much interest in fixing things, since they get so much of their financial backing from the Street. Unfortunately for them, the fringes of their parties—and voters—do care. [br] The author closes the passage with a______note.
选项
A、cautious
B、warning
C、sarcastic
D、humorous
答案
B
解析
态度题。作者在文章最后三句提到华盛顿和主要的政治家,他们也受到了华尔街的影响和股市利益的操控,似乎对于纠正目前经济领域出现的这些问题并不关心,但一些边缘政治家和选民们还是关心这个问题的。并在最后一句用unfortunately for them表达了作者对政界的警示,故答案为[B]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3241563.html
相关试题推荐
Butifyouopenyourmindaswidelyaspossible,thensignsandhintsofalmost
Whichevertheymaydifferwidelyinfunction,allcellshaveasurroundingmembr
Arabiclanguageisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyusedlanguages.Itisthe
Arabiclanguageisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyusedlanguages.Itisthe
Arabiclanguageisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyusedlanguages.Itisthe
Arabiclanguageisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyusedlanguages.Itisthe
Arabiclanguageisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyusedlanguages.Itisthe
Englishisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyspokenlanguages.Thisispartly
Englishisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyspokenlanguages.Thisispartly
Englishisoneoftheworld’smostwidelyspokenlanguages.Thisispartly
随机试题
[originaltext]NewresearchintoglobalwarmingpublishedinthejournalSci
AcademicFreedomreferstotherightofteachersandresearchers,particular
InChina,over84percentofemployerschosetogiveyear-endbonuses(奖金)to
四合院(Siheyuan)是中国传统民居中最重要的形式。它数量多、分布广,并且在汉族、满族、白族以及其他少数民族中十分流行。大多数房屋采用木质框架。主屋建
纲要信号图式教学法的突出作用在于( )。A.简明扼要地表现知识 B.直观性很
共用题干 某地区房地产交易中卖方、买方应交纳的税费分别为正常成交价格的6%和2
关于FIDIC施工合同条件中合同担保的说法,不正确的有()。A.承包商接收预
某桥梁基础,基坑土质较差且有严重流砂现象、地下水位较高、基坑不深但坑壁不易稳定,
施工单位承接了某国道的交通安全设施施工项目,起讫桩号K296+400~K316+
男性,71岁,吸烟患者。反复咳嗽、咳痰、气喘40年,近1周来咳黄痰,且黏稠不易咳
最新回复
(
0
)