Joint-stock companies are yet in their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead of being a thing which can be overturned, is a thing which is becoming more and more indispensable.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping.
Successful enterprises are built from the ground up. You can't assemble them with a bunch of acquisitions.
Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.
The stock market clearly values companies that can deliver disruptive innovation.
Some companies use off-balance-sheet partnerships to raise money or to buy assets without ever telling their shareholders in their financial statements.
When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage.
Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do.
Today, public companies don't like the idea of conglomerates. People want to buy something in which they know where they are putting their money - into the food business or the oil and gas business. They don't want to put their money into a hodge-podge as a general rule.
Reasonable mergers generate substantial synergies, so that provides for earnings and cash-flow growth even if it doesn't provide for revenue growth, and I think that's a big driver.
By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.