This news will stun readers, I know, but US company executives have found a way to siphon off Trump’s company tax cuts for themselves.
As is now widely accepted, the tax cuts have mostly flowed into share buybacks and higher dividends by US companies — with buybacks hitting an all-time record level. Buybacks usually push the price of shares up. A new investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission has spotted that buybacks are being immediately followed by company executives offloading some of their own stock to take advantage of rising prices. As CNN put it, “the report studied 385 buybacks in 2017 and during the first three months of 2018. Thanks to the reliable stock bounce, insiders gained a total of $75.1 million on their stock sales, the SEC researchers calculated”.
Such trading isn’t necessarily illegal, SEC commission Robert J. Jackson said. However he said that “the Trump tax bill has unleashed an unprecedented wave of buybacks, and I worry that lax SEC rules and corporate oversight are giving executives yet another chance to cash out at investor expense”.
What chance Australia’s well-remunerated corporate executives won’t do exactly the same if the Business Council and the government have their way and handed tens of billions of dollars in windfalls to companies — many of whom are already handing back capital via share buybacks or higher dividends?
“This news will stun readers, I know, but US company executives have found a way to siphon off Trump’s company tax cuts for themselves”. Said Bernard Keane.
Nice one Bernard. The only ones that would be stunned are News Corp readers. Dangling a honey pot in front of anyone is very hard to resist, and greed knows no bounds amongst the already, extremely well off.
Say NO to tax cuts for large corporations.
They probably got bonuses for “shareholder value” too.
Is it just me, does this strike anybody as conflict of interest? The executives had a choice as to what to do with the tax cut gains, and chose to do something that benefited themselves, and not necessarily the company.
Excellent point.It doesn’t just ‘strike’ me as a conflict of interest, it reeks of it. Once pigs know where the trough is they keep returning.
Had the same thought Wayne, they would be getting bigger bonuses as share price is invariably part of the hurdles (laugh, I nearly died!) that company executives have to meet to get really large bonuses. Apparently getting paid shiteloads isn’t sufficient incentive for these people to turn up to work, they need bonuses as well.
All part of the KPI nightmare that we inherited from the managerialist class. Talk about failures!
But that’s just America – and the rest of the world – it could never happen here.
This government and their BCA puppet-masters have told us so?
Par for the course, of course.
Turnbull rolled out the same ol’ chestnut in parliament today, namely, that the disproportionate tax cut to the wealthy was ok because it would result in higher wages and more jobs when, of course, there is no empirical study the world over that supports that nexus. As PM he’d know this, like most observers. Its so tiring to see the ideological right rolling that same chest nut over and over when it really needs to be smashed. Trickle through is cr*p.