They've been doing the exact right thing for the shareholders: squeezing the living shit out of an asset (x86/64) for decades while cutting anything interesting or competitive to the bone to give shareholders more money.
I would quibble with the exact right thing phrases but otherwise agree. Intel indeed followed a formula which is intended to and often does produce massive return for some time frame. The formula is indeed "gutting the company" - squeeze every part of an enterprise and return the results as profits. Whether destroying the companies long term prospects is worth these short term profits is a complex calculation.
A managers' duty is to promote long term value and stability, actually, but return enough short term profits and you trump that long investment income.
There are orhanized ways to wind down a business unit or even a whole business and convert the salvagable assets into shareholder value, these range from corp dev / M&A activity all the way through bankrupcy and bondholder seniority.
And in the days when fraud or "fraud-adjacent" behavior carried serious costs? When violating the social contract around pensions and severance and stuff had real reputational costs that followed the principles around? People used them when necessary. You sold off the assets sometimes.
But beginning with the LBO "innovation" in the 80s and running a line through Milken and shit all the way to the Vanguard/State Street/Blackrock "quasi-sovereign" level of PE asset capture?
People started arbing it, not by seeing value where others had missed it! By betting that Gordon Gecko had enough fans to make the arb work. "Gutting" a company slowely and painfully is in a bucket I'll call "fraud adjacent": usually not outright illegal (lotta "gray" work, gray edge), clearly not what society wants or intended, and you know it's a scam when you look in the mirror every night. i used to get wasted with these guys at Catch when I lived in NYC: they'll tell you everytging I am and more on five gin and tonics
There's no place for the word "duty" in any version of that argument unless you also use the word "derelict".
Don't think I'm using duty in any sense other than the sense than that the corporate raiders have set-up a situation where management feels forced to engage in the program of gutting they outline. All of this is part of the gutting of the US of course.
By betting that Gordon Gecko had enough fans to make the arb work. "Gutting" a company slowely and painfully is in a bucket I'll call "fraud adjacent": usually not outright illegal (lotta "gray" work, gray edge), clearly not what society wants or intended
Sure, but if society doesn't intend this, society has to f---ing do something. Clearly it's not.
IE: if the only legal obligation of management is promoting maximum legally possible valuation over time, "squeezing" still makes sense if there's enough money to be had. The only way to change this is forcing the issue in some fashion or other.
I would quibble with the exact right thing phrases but otherwise agree. Intel indeed followed a formula which is intended to and often does produce massive return for some time frame. The formula is indeed "gutting the company" - squeeze every part of an enterprise and return the results as profits. Whether destroying the companies long term prospects is worth these short term profits is a complex calculation.
A managers' duty is to promote long term value and stability, actually, but return enough short term profits and you trump that long investment income.