Innovation

نابليونات شركات التكنولوجيا الكبرى

Dec 1, 2022 Bill Emmott

لندن- لطالما تعين على الشركات إدارة "المخاطر الناجمة عن غياب أحد موظفيها الرئيسيين"، بل وحتى الحصول على تأمين ضد احتمال فقدان كبار المسؤولين التنفيذيين بسبب الوفاة أو المرض أو الإصابة بجروح. ولكن انهيار بورصة العملات المشفرة "FTX" وانخفاض سعر سهم شركة "Meta"، والفوضى السائدة في "تويتر" بعد تولي "إيلون ماسك" إدارتها، كلها عوامل تشير إلى أن "الموظفين الرئيسيين" يمكن أن يشكلوا نوعًا مختلفًا تمامًا من الخطر؛ دعنا نسميها مخاطر "المؤسس النابوليوني". وربما يجب أن يطالب المستثمرون والمقرضون بعلاوة تحميهم من احتمال أن يصبح رائد أعمال يتمتع بالنجومية ديكتاتورًا أنانيًا يومًا ما، ومن ثم مهدرا للأموال.

وبطبيعة الحال، ليست هذه المخاطر وليدة اليوم. إذ أثبت تاريخ الأعمال أن العديد من المديرين التنفيذيين خاطروا بأموال الشركات، وأن العديد من رجال الأعمال الناجحين أخفقوا في إدراك أن الشركات الناضجة التي تطرح أسهمها للتداول العام ليست لعبة يستخدمونها لأغراضهم الشخصية. ولكن يبدو أنه مع كل دورة عمل، يجب تعلم الدروس القديمة من جديد.

في أعقاب انهيار الإنترنت في مطلع هذا القرن، قال المستثمر الأمريكي المعروف "وارن بافيت" في تعليقه الساخر الشهير: "لن تكتشف من يسبح عاريا إلا عندما ينحسر المد". وهذا هو حال دورة الأعمال الحديثة: فهي تدور إلى الأبد من التفاؤل إلى التشاؤم، ومن الازدهار إلى الانهيار. ومع ذلك، ربما كان ممكنا أن يضيف "بافيت" أنه حين يكون المد المرتفع متفائلا يجب اتخاذ الاحتياطات. وبمجرد أن تواجه الحقيقة المجردة، فقد تكون أموالك قد ضاعت بالفعل.

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peter yeoh Dec 5, 2022

Why are the current management and governance practices in the major capital markets tolerating this challenge, despite the 'obvious' damages it is inflicting? Or maybe, the impact of this is as yet to be viewed as of sufficient magnitude, but why? Or, is it because major financial institutions have already factored this in their risk management practices?
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vic lai Dec 3, 2022

Napoleon- and egomaniacal-dictator-like US entrepreneurs, in the country's most promising technology sector, is just reflecting today's Pax Americana which is perhaps still (relatively) in her heyday.
Today, thanks to the ongoing Ukraine War, not only many of the world's EM countries but also some of the world's DM countries are all feeling rightly that the US, as the unique hegemon country under the sun, is even more Napoleon- and egomaniacal-dictator-like than those highly successful US IT entrepreneurs.
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We now all know what's recently happened to Jack Ma, founder of China's Alibaba.
If both Jack Ma and Elon Musk do not know the famous power struggles between Nicholas Biddle and Andrew Jackson in 19th century America over the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, then they should learn carefully from that episode of American economic history :
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"The Bank’s charter gave the institution too much power over the nation’s financial markets, he argued—power that enabled it to generate huge profits for its stockholders, most of whom were “foreigners” and “our own opulent citizens.
If we must have a bank with private stockholders, every consideration of sound policy and every impulse of American feeling admonishes that it should be purely American,” Jackson wrote.
But the real evil of the Bank, Jackson claimed, was its creation of a privileged class of Americans with too much money and political power. “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes,” he wrote.
This was unjust and dangerous to “the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves.”
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Ever since that episode, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, the US's entrepreneurs and businessmen had mostly learnt to be safely keeping a relatively low political and public profile, and had also become mostly reticent since then.
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But, sadly, perhaps some of the newly-cropped-up global billionaires in the 21st century aren't aware of that 19th-century economic lesson (and many other similar lessons in the histories of other countries).
As far as I know, the very successful and richest real-estate billionaire tycoons have always kept a very low political profile in the city I'm now living in.
Already having their own political agents representing and working for them somewhere inside our city government's bureaucratic infrastructure, those city tycoons almost always never publicly comment on the city government's governing policies, let alone publicly criticizing the incumbent city government leader and his or her high-ranking government officials.
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Well, even today's US government officials and the US Congresspeople should all (re-)learn from the Biddle-Jackson infighting mentioned above, to help mitigate the precarious trend of rising populism in their country in this century.
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alex Finch Dec 2, 2022

Interesting that Emmott, former editor of the Economist is suggesting it’s chaos at twitter, even comparing it to FTX. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s comes from a family of university professors. Elon Musk and SBF are worlds apart.
- Lester Soss Dec 5, 2022
  
  Musk, who also comes from a privileged background, is and has always been equivalent to a barker at a carnival. Others create the product, and he comes along and takes credit. Unfortunately for him, the chickens have come home to roost at Twitter. This "genius" has no clue what he is doing and his "successes" will turn out to be as ephemeral and transitory as Bankman-Fried's.
  
  I would advise anyone who invests long on Tesla stock on the basis of his business acumen to watch the Ted talk that systematically exposes him as just such a flim-flam artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeUvcJUdRK0.
  
  The irony of this adulation of Musk is that it comes mostly from ostensible libertarians who believe that the market will out in all circumstances. The invisible hand and all that. And yet when Musk remarks a month ago that Tesla sales would increase by 50% per year for the indefinite future, they are not set back on their heels. 50%! That would mean, using a simple compounding equation, that in 8 years, Tesla will produce 50 million cars per year! [ A = P(1+i)^n = 2 million (1.5)^8 ]. Now, given that these cars, at least to their supporters, are mechanical marvels, one can ask how many will be on the streets after 8 years?
  
  Again, that is a geometric series with "r" = (1.5). That sum, for 8 years comes to 98.51 million! How many charging stations are there? How many will have to be built?
  
  And so on... I know that the Musk fan boys will say that he will use his genius to come up with an even cheaper and better tulip.
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