If you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, you're worried about quarterly returns.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think most CEOs think their stock is undervalued, probably.
There's such a preoccupation with liquidity and such an unwillingness to invest beyond the horizon of the next quarter and making sure that the CEOs hit their quarterly earnings.
Business chief executive officers and their boards succumb to the pressures of the financial markets and their fears of takeovers and pour out their energies to produce quarterly earnings - at the expense of building their companies for the long term.
As the CEO, I have to take care of the short term, mid term and the long term.
It's important to choose initial investors who are not twitchy and rushing for an exit. Wall Street's quarter-by-quarter lens may make the CEO make sub-optimal long-term decisions.
We're only going to invest our shareholders' money where we think they can get the kind of returns they expected when they invested their money with Exxon Mobil.
Whether you stay private or go public, after all is said and done, a CEO's job is to create lasting shareholder value.
Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that.
My shareholders expect me to make the most profit. That's the ugly, dirty truth.
Be true to yourself, and, um, don't worry about some large companies' quarterly profit index.