Upcoming UAW Strike

What, briefly please, are horizontal holdings?

 

[QUOTE="Grumppy, post: 12571563, member:
I just wish Lee Iacocca was still around......[/QUOTE]
The fellow who ignored safety concerns of Pinto fuel tanks because it went nearly a dollar over projected cost.
The man running Chysler when it needed a bailout in the 80s ?
Not much of a hero, in my eyes

 

Say there are 5 restaurants in town, each 'independent' of each other. In theory, the 5 restaurants are in competition with each other.

Over time, Bob buys 20% of each restaurant. While he may not have controlling interest, when the next biggest shareholder only has 10%, Bob effectively controls all the restaurants in town and can create the illusion of competition while in fact gouging the ever living heck out of the diners. If anyone else tries to open a restaurant, Bob has the ability to undercut the market, destroy or absorb the competition, then resume normal business practices.

This virtually guaranteed income allows Bob to start vertical integration - buying stakes in the food suppliers, the linen company, etc.

Blackrock and Vanguard have $20 TRILLION in assets between them and control proxy votes for approximately 15% of the S&P500. Institutional investors 'own' 70% of the stocks listed in US based exchanges. Of the 30% of 'retail' owners, less than 30% return voting materials, with 80% of those following the board's recommendation. In effect Blackrock and Vanguard's executive team control the US economy.

For those who will shout "Sherman Anti-trust!" - things are structured so that they stay just under the mandated level. IE Roger is the pension/401k manager for P&G and JPL - two companies that have no direct competition and have very little they wish to say about their funds under management, provided the returns are adequate. Add in Roger's other accounts and all of a sudden Roger controls a seat on the board of every major player in the industry.

I tried to be brief, and have oversimplified things greatly, but you get the idea.

 

The UAW needs to keep their workers off the TV cameras. I can't count how many times these workers have talked about needing 2nd jobs and how they're barely making ends meet. It's getting old fast making themselves look the fool

 

Amen !!!

 

Just for comparison, it was told to me by an anesthesioligist client, that roughly 17% of the entire economy is based in healthcare.

 

One point always put forward is the difference between Top Executives pay and Workers pay. I’ve heard it’s 50 times the amount on average, 100 times, some crazy amount, and that’s for a lot of different major companies of all types. Whatever it is, it’s because the high amount of pay received is a result of being paid in stock shares/dividends. Lee Iacocao took 0 salary when he came to Chrysler. The year he retired he set a new record for Executive compensation. I think it was $83 million. I forget the exact amount. By comparison Toyotas Top Executive makes something like 4 times the average Workers wage.

 

Ford did not take bailout. That was Chysler, their 3rd bailout.

 

"Here we have supine boards of directors voting for whatever the CEO wants in exchange for corporate welfare for the board members. That doesn't happen in Japan because corporations are owned in large part by banks, which exercise real control, and not by shareholders, who don't. So this isn't about culture. It's about the structure of corporate ownership and the failure of the American model to provide adequate corporate governance."
5 Lessons of Japan's Rock-Bottom CEO Salaries

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26592017

To be fair, Japanese CEO pay has been rising rapidly in the last few years as more firms adopt a performance pay model.