I have never seen an employee who jumps out of bed in the morning in order to create shareholder value.
Oligopoly, plutocracy, kleptocracy: All things that are good for a shareholder.
It's an unbelievable responsibility to influence decisions, shareholder value and most important to me, people's careers and livelihoods.
They [in the New York Times] are really, really bad people. The largest shareholder in the Times is Carlos Slim.
I meet with Satya [Nadella] what probably amounts to four or five times a year - either to brainstorm something or just as a shareholder, we'll sit down and chat. That's always quite helpful for me and hopefully him in terms of thinking things through. I still have a number of friends and colleagues who occasionally want to brainstorm or chat about something, and that's always fun.
I don't want to give a lecture to this body that's out there. You know, I mean, having had the heart attack, I want to get it back functioning. And as a practical matter, I mean if you were Bear Stearns, and you were a shareholder, you know, you lost 90 to 95 percent of your money. A good many lost their jobs. They lost very cushy lives, many of them.
I was always acting primarily with shareholder interests in mind. It's also true I've always had a fairly moralistic attitude to business, and would not do anything that I considered improper. As a consequence, I have occasionally pursued issues during my career that other people might have avoided.
The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.
If the government wants to do social policy, it should not be done in a quasi-public company. If you have a mortgage guarantee company which is done by the U. S. government, it should be guaranteed by the originators, i. e. , the shareholder.
