How Intel Financialized and Lost Leadership in Semiconductor Fabrication (ineteconomics.org) 119
William Lazonick and Matt Hopkins, writing at Institute for New Economic Thinking: Why has Intel fallen behind TSMC and SEC in semiconductor fabrication, and why is it unlikely to catch up? The problem is that Intel is engaged in two types of competition, one with companies like TSMC and SEC in cutting-edge fabrication technology and the other within Intel itself between innovation and financialization. The Asian companies have governance structures that vaccinate them from an economic virus known as "maximizing shareholder value" (MSV). Intel caught the virus over two decades ago. As we shall see, with the sudden appointment of Gelsinger as CEO this past winter, Intel sent out a weak signal that it recognizes that it has the disease.
In the years 2011-2015, Intel was in the running, along with TSMC and SEC, to be the fabricator of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod chips that Apple designed. While Intel spent $50b. on P&E and $53b. on R&D over those five years, it also lavished shareholders with $36b. in stock buybacks and $22b. in cash dividends, which together absorbed 102% of Intel's net income. From 2016 through 2020, Intel spent $67b. on P&E and $66b. on R&D, but also distributed almost $27b. as dividends and another $45b. as buybacks. Intel's ample dividends have provided an income yield to shareholders for, as the name says, holding Intel shares. In contrast, the funds spent on buybacks have rewarded sharesellers, including senior Intel executives with their stock-based pay, for executing well-timed sales of their Intel shares to realize gains from buyback-manipulated stock prices.
In the years 2011-2015, Intel was in the running, along with TSMC and SEC, to be the fabricator of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod chips that Apple designed. While Intel spent $50b. on P&E and $53b. on R&D over those five years, it also lavished shareholders with $36b. in stock buybacks and $22b. in cash dividends, which together absorbed 102% of Intel's net income. From 2016 through 2020, Intel spent $67b. on P&E and $66b. on R&D, but also distributed almost $27b. as dividends and another $45b. as buybacks. Intel's ample dividends have provided an income yield to shareholders for, as the name says, holding Intel shares. In contrast, the funds spent on buybacks have rewarded sharesellers, including senior Intel executives with their stock-based pay, for executing well-timed sales of their Intel shares to realize gains from buyback-manipulated stock prices.
Going private. (Score:3)
The Asian companies have governance structures that vaccinate them from an economic virus known as "maximizing shareholder value" (MSV).
Didn't Dell inoculate themselves by going private?
Re:Going private. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it saved Dell from the disease, but going private is no guarantee. The owners can still mortgage the company's future, enrich themselves, and then disappear in a haze of golden parachutes after they find some suckers to which to sell the corpse.
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This is why school vouchers and charter schools can sometimes swerve out of the control. The owners may decide they want cash now instead of tomorrow, cut corners, make a big short-term profit, and then sell the biz to the highest bidder. Thousands of students may be left high and dry. You can't just plug-and-play thousands of students (and teachers) into a new school. Capitalism is not based on consistency.
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This is why school vouchers and charter schools can sometimes swerve out of the control.
As can public schools. Been there, done that, moved because I wanted better for my daughters because of it. No vouchers, flat up, the money that the state provides for the education of our children should follow that child. Home school, private, religious, public, I don't care.
Academically speaking pretty much anything outperforms public these days, and this would help reduce "white privilege". Imagine how many POC would chose to educated their kids elsewhere if they could afford to do so.
Or is
Re: Going private. (Score:2)
Just remember that the person that buys the corpse usually makes money by selling, euphemistically, the body parts. That is the basic job of private equity companies.
Re: Going private. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with maximizing shareholder value is that shareholders end up with a lot of money, but all that money can then only be used to buy crap, since everything of quality that they'd have wanted to own also went through MSV. It's basically the large scale version of "penny wise, pound foolish" or, to put it technically, the result of recurrently defecting on iterated prisoner's dilemmas.
But hey!, if you believe a bank account with eight or more zeroes is worth shit when everything around you has degraded into shit, by all means, go for it! You'll get exactly what you're striving for, no two ways about it!
Re: Going private. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Going private. (Score:3)
Then just wait for when they're acquired by a Private Equity company, have all their R&D fired, and a skeleton crew contracted in a Russian-satellite country to handle support, while their fab machines stop getting new investments. Your divindeds will grow ten times! In the two years it takes for the company to go bankrupt. But it'll be well worth it!
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Seems like governments over there are more willing to step in to block that kind of thing.
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It would be worth it as an investor.
Yes. Which brings me back to my original point.
Here's a change I'd like to see: limited liability laws removed. You want to be an owner of a company? Nice! You're now personally responsible for what everyone under your ownership does, including criminally, including with everyone you own as collateral, because full freedom goes well with full responsibility, while Responsibility-less Capitalism is a contradiction in terms.
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Damn autocorrect. everyone -> everything.
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To the limit of your assets and lifespan
ACCOUNTABILITY BABY!!!
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Are you pretending your death will be good for you?
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It's very very expensive if you're hoping to earn money off of the dividends. Intel has a much higher yield at current prices.
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Exactly.
I have seen this over and over, trying to hit the current quarterly results and not bothered about what happens a year or 5 down the road, cos they expect to be out before it happens and its not their problem anymore.
If companies start paying executives in a manner which takes into account long term future performance, it will probably be better.
Re: Going private. (Score:3)
It seems you believe the new corporate doctrine that began being taught in the 1970's, when the very idea you expressed was invented to replace the older one. Google "Stakeholder Capitalism" and learn how Capitalism was practiced in the, oh, 170 years or so before that. You might learn a thing or two.
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Stakeholder value is basically the Nordic model and the one practiced in Japan. I'm not sure about Taiwan but I get the impression they are more inclined that way too.
Given that Nordic countries have the highest quality of life in the world and Japan still has life-long employment, it seems to work pretty well.
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Given that Nordic countries have the highest quality of life in the world and Japan still has life-long employment, it seems to work pretty well.
Nordic countries can't exist without environmental destruction and Japan has astronomical suicide rates partially related to their make-work culture.
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You do realize that the US has a higher suicide rate than Japan right? Does that mean Japan's employment/capitalistic model is better than the US's?
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https://apps.who.int/gho/data/... [who.int]
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Sorry for the double post, forgot to add numbers... in any case, from https://apps.who.int/gho/data/... [who.int]
2019 Suicide Rate (per 100k):
Japan --- 12.2
USA -- 15.5
I should note though that historically Japan's has been higher than the US, but that changed a few years ago.
Re: Going private. (Score:2)
Your mention of Apple is interesting, because it's a clear case of a modern stakeholders capitalist company. Case in point, there's one huge source of money Apple leaves on the table, that'd maximize shareholder value even more, but that it doesn't because it knows there are many aspects of its brand that cannot monetize without devaluing it in the very act of maximizing it's merely monetary value, namely, they refuse to license and monetize their trademark in clothes and other stuff. Any bean counter "exec
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Mod parent up for bring "bean counters" into the discussion. But mod parent down for mentioning "clothes" on Slashdot.
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Apple is a greedy Capitalist American company which is worth $1 trillion and exploits Third World environmental laws and labor for their benefit.
Yes, they're greedy, they're Capitalist, they're American, and they're worth $1 trillion. But do you know why it is that you know and can mention the environmental and labor questions Apple is involved in? Hint: think of the other thousands of American greedy Capitalist American companies that exploit Third World environmental laws and labor, and about which you hear nothing, know nothing, and thus criticize nothing. You'll notice an essential difference at the root of your knowing of these aspects.
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Don’t pay the employees or anything. Without them your company is useless.
Re: Going private. (Score:1)
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Taiwan isn't either, and that's where the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company mentioned in the summary is from. I assume the other, SEC, is Samsung, from Korea.
OP seems to be under the impression that "Asia" is "China," and that China is a command economy.
Corporate Structure (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Corporate Structure (Score:3, Interesting)
So, they followed Boeing's path (Score:3)
Our whole economy is following the same road to hell with endless quantitative easing costing trillions
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QE was used as a substitute for a congress-created stimulus package. The Fed. Reserve kept hinting to Congress that a 2nd stimulus was needed to pull us out of the Great Recession faster, but Congress ignored the call, so the Fed used QE as an imperfect substitute.
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QE has been running since at least 2008, more like 1913, but, whatever.. It never ended. They don't even count the money any more, it's just an open spigot flooding the basement. It has nothing to do with congress. That's the sad part. Trillions and trillions, and no money for infrastructure?
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> QE has been running since at least 2008
That's because fast action was required after the crash. But the FR had later stated they didn't wish to continue, but felt compelled because of the lack of a Congress-passed 2nd stimulus. Perhaps they had ulterior motives, but I've seen no clear evidence of that.
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They were the crash, they caused it, they should be in jail. Sorry that you believe the headline version of what is really a heist. Congress has nothing to do with this. They are just sitting back watching it happen while telling us the country is broke.
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You're full of shit.
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:-) That's funny, but it's the tabloids you believe that are full of it..
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Thanks for comparing the two. It's a good reminder to us all to ignore anything you have to say about economics.
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:-) Just telling you the truth, that's all. Feel free to ignore all you want, no skin off my back. If you got a dog in this race, just know when to cash out, in the meantime play it for all it's worth. And there are always big buy opportunities after a crash. Intel, Boeing, QE, there's still plenty of money to be made. As they say in Vegas, *Good Luck*®
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:-) Just telling you the truth, that's all.
That you don't understand QE or that you don't understand MSV? Or both?
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Understand it perfectly as I watch it happen. It's corrupt as hell. Creates huge ridiculous market distortions for profit. All that money can be channeled into something useful, like, oh, I don't know, infrastructure or something. We already could have rebuilt our entire electrical/plumbing systems ten time over, for the entire hemisphere, and maybe Europe too.. Tens of trillions are going down the drain to feed the unicorns.
I'm just going to assume you don't like to be told that you are being robbed. It's
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Forgot to add that the two things relate because the entire economy has been financialized (fictionalized), from producing goods to commodities speculation (I'm sure you know what the FIRE sector is, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate). So it will "suffer" just like Intel and Boeing, low quality/high prices..
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The problem is that making the people holding all the cash to release it into the economy is too socialist for many to accept, so the only other option is quantitative easing.
This is another failure of trickle-down. Not just that it doesn't trickle down very much in the good times, but when the economy isn't looking so great it gets actively horded.
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Die already intel! (Score:2)
And take your equally corrupt buddy nvidia .
What the fuck is happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
These are neither viruses nor vaccines. Stop diluting and abusing words.
Re:What the fuck is happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't be business writing if they didn't take an already weak metaphor and beat the ever living daylights out of it.
This doesn't tell me anything. (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to make a comparison, what did TSMC, etc. invest in terms of R&D, etc.?
TSMC R&D figures (Score:3)
In order to make a comparison, what did TSMC, etc. invest in terms of R&D, etc.?
Details here: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] It looks like they spend about 21% of their net income on R&D, so pretty much the same as Intel's 19% from table 1 in TFA. That's this year. The article does note that Intel has doubled its R&D investment since the 90s. So possibly TSMC has been spending 20% consistently and getting ahead of Intel that way, or (perhaps more likely) Intel management is investing its R&D poorly by doubling down on x86.
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They aren't investing it "poorly" by doubling down on x86. The ISA isn't the same as the core architecture. Good circuit designs can be implemented just as well in one ISA as they can another. If Intel decided today to switch 100% to RISCV for example, all of their previous patents and designs can still be leveraged in those new chips.
They did run into a serious problem with 10nm which was supposed to be their flagship process for 2016. And here we are just now getting 10nm desktop parts and the process sti
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I couldn't find historic data for TSMC, but they have just announced $100bn over 3 years to increase capacity at cutting edge nodes.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
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Classic example of MBA guys running a company instead of ex engineers. See Boeing.
Re:This doesn't tell me anything. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just re-reading a Boeing/McDonnell Douglas story today, and this quote from a post-merge CEO jumped out at me: “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.”
When I read that, it clicked that his goal was to get money by selling shares, rather than to get money by selling airplanes.
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Yeah, they are "investment" companies now. MSV will be achieved by "diversifying" their portfolios. The flash flood of cash from the fed leaves them little choice.
More like lack of innovation & complacent (Score:5, Informative)
There are MANY factors for Intel losing dominance. I'll briefly go over some of the technical ones.
Intel literally held quad-core gaming back a decade until AMD came along and brought cores for cheap to the public. Due to AMD's Threadripper competition Intel was forced to drop the price of the i9 10980XE by a whopping 50% compared to the previous i9 9980XE generation. If that isn't fleecing the market I don't know what is.
Intel also poured money into products that went nowhere such as Larrabee [wikipedia.org]. They bought Project Offset [wikipedia.org] that went nowhere. They bought Havok [wikipedia.org] and sold it off to Microsoft.
Speaking of Larrabee Intel recently released their "fourth" GPU, the Xe DG1 which is roughly on par with a GT 1030 [youtu.be] -- which is already 2 generations behind Nvidia's lineup. Who is going to buy this card???
You can roughly break Intel's graphics into 4 "eras":
*i860 / i960
* Larrabee, aka software rasterization
* Knights Landing which got folded into Intel's integrated HD graphics, and
* DG1 -- which literally stands for Discrete Graphics.
Technically, Intel has been involved with many GPUs as this good article on Intel's GPU History [computer.org] shows.
Andy Grove wrote a book Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company [amazon.com]. Apparently Intel has forgotten its roots. Either you will be challenged from internal or external. In Intel's case it was both. They got incompetent releasing nickel-and-dime increments. I believe their downfall started started when Intel was basically forced to cross-licensed x64 from AMD. When you have to license 64-bit extensions from your competitor what does that tell your customers???
Intel used to brag about "Real World" benchmarks but now that AMD is also outperforming Intel notice how Intel changes their tune. Ironically they were pointing out AMD's CPUmore then their own CPU! [youtube.com]. LOL. When Intel has the mass market perception of being the "budget gaming" CPU you know the market has severely changed.
Intel has WAY too many models [quora.com]. The general consumer doesn't care about all these models. Apple knows that most consumers just want 3 models: good, better, best.
AVX512 is a clusterfuck [semiaccurate.com] of different standards. Linus called it [realworldtech.com] a "power virus that takes away top frequency." OUCH.
Intel was been plagued with Security [bloomberg.com] problems of Meltdown and Spectre due to taking "shortcuts" on performance. Now they are paying the price.
Intel shenanigans with benchmarks [semiaccurate.com] such as gimping code when running on AMD isn't also winning any friends. Even the FTC got involved [ftc.gov]
Everyone laughed at AMD when they sold their FAB. Maybe it was good decision, maybe it was a bad one. So far, it seems to be working out well for AMD and for TSMC.
I'm no AMD fanboi. I have an i7 4770K and a few Threadrippe
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There's another thing Intel had to watch out for. Potentially being seen as a monopoly like Microsoft and suffer a similar effect. Some of that licensing could be seen as a, "see we're not a monopoly".
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That's a good point. Thanks!
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Is CPU-based rendering a flawed concept, or just Intel's implementation?
I only ask because of the story here on Slashdot earlier in the week about Libre-SOC.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
It pairs a Debian's Kazan implementation of Vulkan with a SimpleV extension to the openPOWER ISA.
If, as you claim, AVX512 is on the wrong path then perhaps a rethink by lkcl's GPU project is something Intel could adopt in their hybrid Alder Lake platform which pairs a few 'big' cores with a number of 'little' cores.
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> Is CPU-based rendering a flawed concept, or just Intel's implementation?
This is kind of a complicated subject so forgive me if I provide a bigger summary.
If you are talking about offline rendering then yes, 3D modeling programs have proved software rendering is quite viable, such as Blender, 3D Studio Max, Maya, etc. decades ago.
i.e. The fastest render engine is... [youtube.com]
If you are talking out real-time rendering then the answer isn't so clear cut.
Notice how both AMD and Intel provide APUs. That is, CPUs tha
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You're talking about Intel retail products. This all has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
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AMD is king of the desktop right now and competitive on laptops. They offer better battery life than Intel, but the one thing they lack of Thunderbolt. Next year they will launch Ryzen 6000 series with USB 4 that includes Thunderbolt.
Intel must be bricking it for when that happens as it will be the last major advantage they have in laptops. In fact I think it's the only advantage - their top end mobile chips are about 5% faster than AMD's, but also much more expensive and battery killing, and they will prob
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Intel literally held quad-core gaming back a decade until AMD came along and brought cores for cheap to the public.
id argue otherwise.
this was the very beginning of AMD's infamous "moar core" phase (phenom), where they couldnt compete on single thread performance, so they sold CPUs with lots of cores (compared to intel);
but having many cores was largely useless in gaming, because games didnt multi-thread well (or at all).
basically, after the athlon CPUs, AMD was consistently the inferior choice for gaming up until... now, with the ryzen CPUs. that's a long time to suck.
so what did hold back multi-threaded gaming? c
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> but having many cores was largely useless in gaming, because games didn't multi-thread well (or at all).
> so what did hold back multi-threaded gaming? consoles.
I've shipped console games. Your information is incomplete [bit-tech.net] sprinkled with some truths.
First, the timeline:
2000 PS2
2006 PS3
2009 Phenom II X4 955BE
2013 PS4
Consoles games have been multi-processor for over decades. The Saturn (1994) has 8 (!) processors. On the PS2 (2000) you have 7 separate processors -- one for the CPU, Graphics, Sound, a
Unlikely to catch up.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The main point of the article was to point to how Intel management shifted profits from R&D to using the funds for stock buybacks. While it's true that Intel lost ground as a result of the lack of R&D investment, there really isn't any discussion about why they would be unlikely to catch up beyond this.
Given the financial stability of Intel, at least in the near term, I don't see any reason why they can re-start investing in R&D, hiring scientists away from the competition, etc. I'm thinking that this would require at least 3 to 5 years, but I don't see it as unlikely, it'll just take time.
Then again, 3 to 5 years used to be the standard strategic plan for most businesses. These days, it's something that might happen way in the future. Which is probably why the author can't see beyond next year...
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I don't see any reason why they can re-start investing in R&D
Kind of like not being able to see why someone who started smoking can't simply stop. It's an addiction to creating short term shareholder value. Changing a corporate culture is far harder than you make it out. Companies which successful do so are usually the ones that cycle ALL leadership positions at once to purge the opinions of old.
i.e. If Intel aren't doing it now, don't expect the current CxOs to be capable of doing it.
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Which is why you can't see beyond your navel.
As thegarbz points out, welcome to corporate culture. More importantly, welcome to investor sentiment.
Every publicly traded corporation is beholden to investor sentiment. When earnings reports are released, CEO's are pissing their pants hoping investors are pleased with the results and pray their stock price goes up - REGARDLESS IF THEY HAD GOOD BUSINESS RESULTS.
On every investor call,
Intel was always this shitty (Score:4, Interesting)
The last thing Intel would ever do is compete on a level playing field. Intel has a VERY long history of anti-competitive behavior from their very beginning. They have scrubbed the Wikipedia page but they have been kneecapping AMD using various methods since 1982. [cpu-museo.it]
Intel started off rotten and the only thing that has changed is people started looking closely at their chipsets. When people poked and prodded they found they had cut corners. Intel tried to muddle reports about this to confuse people into thinking AMD suffered from meltdown and their patches for Linux stunted AMD as much as Intel chips. This was no accident, it was part of the plan. They might have been able to walk it off if their other bad behavior hadn't bitten them at the same time.
Intel has a habit of firing people who didn't research things that were integrated into their last fabrication advancement. This means, there were lots of people researching advancements in fabrication that didn't quite pan out or required more time to research. Instead of retaining them or furthering their research, they went with the survival of the fittest method and fired them. They are behind TSMC because they are corporate idiots who only care about the bottom line and they always have been. It doesn't matter if it's by hook or crook, it was always about making money and it was never about advancing the science.
To some of you this may be news but for those of us paying attention, this is just who Intel is and always has been, greedy corporatists who don't give a shit about anything but making the most money.
The MBAs strike again! (Score:2)
Shareholder value IN THE SHORT TERM (Score:4, Interesting)
The failure to invest for the medium term in an industry that needs massive levels of R&D forever is really the issue. The allegation boils down to Intel being asset stripped by its own management instead of by an outside investor - which is what often happens. The asset strippers usually get away with some impressive plunder; the company tends to end up very sick...
Dividends and buybacks are a symptom (Score:2)
Death by Profits (Score:2)
Asian and German companies are much more likely to focus on the longer term than US companies. ROI theory encourages short-term gains over long-term gains. For industries relying on complex R&D this a recipe for suicide: death by profits.
ROI-now thinking also shrank IBM, as they focused on profits over customer satisfaction, giving themselves a horrible reputation. It takes a long time to repair a damaged reputation. Cutting corners can make you highly profitable for a few years, but karma returns with
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Then why has not a single German or Asian company produced a single CPU or GPU worth talking about?
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Intel lost market share and got behind in technology, despite strong profits. That obviously can't continue forever, unless maybe Intel becomes an investment/holding company instead of a chip maker. It may very well be that in the end the USA doesn't make anything except profits. That's great for most here only if it somehow trickles down.
Intel missed mobile then lost the desktop (Score:3)
So... let's review how the Intel management team failed....
1. Missed mobile because "margins weren't high enough" even though they would sell zillions of CPUs
2. Tried to lock-in the desktop market by coercing laptop and desktop manufacturers to exclusively use Intel chips until AMD hit the gas pedal and provided an equivalent but lower cost item.
3. Tried to lock in the server market until Amazon, Google, and Apple started to move their cloud to non-Intel CPUs for a variety of reasons not just limited to cost, but price per watt.
4. Intel one of its only friends (Apple) in the foot by limiting their ability to sell product because of low CPU yield. When the CEO of Apple reports at a shareholder meeting that "We could have sold a lot more, but our business partner Intel can't seem to produce working CPUs to ship to us."
Intel has a lot of money in the bank, but unless it can quickly revamp it's craptastic chip fab capability and focus on a product line that will generate revenue they are doomed to being bought by the Chinese.
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So... let's review how the Intel management team failed....
1. Missed mobile because "margins weren't high enough" even though they would sell zillions of CPUs 2. Tried to lock-in the desktop market by coercing laptop and desktop manufacturers to exclusively use Intel chips until AMD hit the gas pedal and provided an equivalent but lower cost item. 3. Tried to lock in the server market until Amazon, Google, and Apple started to move their cloud to non-Intel CPUs for a variety of reasons not just limited to cost, but price per watt. 4. Intel one of its only friends (Apple) in the foot by limiting their ability to sell product because of low CPU yield. When the CEO of Apple reports at a shareholder meeting that "We could have sold a lot more, but our business partner Intel can't seem to produce working CPUs to ship to us."
Intel has a lot of money in the bank, but unless it can quickly revamp it's craptastic chip fab capability and focus on a product line that will generate revenue they are doomed to being bought by the Chinese.
Missing mobiles initially wasn't the problem it's that the missed the convergence between mobiles and PCs, Mobile chipsets developed to the point that they can replace at least half the PC market and Intel doesn't have a viable option or strategy. The fact that the Apple M1 exists is a huge failing of Intel who should have been trying to get into that space since missing mobile.
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Missing mobile wasn't the problem. It is that mobile happened.
Basically in the late 1990's Intel was able to leverage the volume of x86 chips and the profits that brought in to gain a fab advantage over the competition. They then used that fab advantage despite having a crappier architecture to have a performance advantage.
Mobile then came along and generated the revenues that other people never had previously to invest in trying to catch up Intel's fab advantage. At the same time Intel slipped up with ther
Actually a common problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually a common problem. If you read enough corporate histories, the largest companies on earth always end up being destroyed by financial parasites. Bethlehem Steel is one; GM is another. They both prospered when the engineers were in charge. There is a *long* list like this which is probably only of interest to history buffs.
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Shades of Hewlett Packard as well.
They had a CFO as CEO for too long. (Score:2)
And not just any CFO, one who continued playing with distractions like âoediversity.â
I was there⦠(Score:2)
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The same thing happened to HP.
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No mod points when I need them. But yes, the departure of Andy Grove seems to be the single biggest factor behind Intel's decline.
Intel could have maximized R&D = Same place (Score:1)
If an employee did this... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I wish I had a mod point for you.
I suspect the two-tiered example you cite is the result of a type of corporate regulatory capture [wikipedia.org]. Corporations should not be treated as individuals by the law, and boards of directors and executives should not be afforded so much personal liability protection by the corporations they plunder.
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TL;DR: Intel was too greedy. (Score:1)
And it turns out we are not in a Star Trek universe, where Ferengon actually functions and does not collapse in a matter of weeks. ;)
(Something Amazon will notice soon too.)
Boeing has a similar problem (Score:2)
Given the availability of these sources of funds, the vast sums that Intel has wasted on buybacks have not thus far imposed a cash constraint on its investments in semiconductor fabrication. Rather, it has been a deficiency in organizational learning—the essence of the innovation process—that has hampered Intel’s implementation of process technology. The generation of high levels of productivity from P&E and R&D expenditures requires, as a second social condition of innovative ente
Could someone please explain to me (Score:2)
Why is a statistically significant number of comments on Slashdot falling under two categories:
1. INET being the source of the story. Does INET have some kind of anti-Intel agenda? Short interest?
2. Comparison to Boeing. Given that a quarter of the S&P500 is probably in the same situation as Intel, why choose Boeing over any other huge company? Is there some weird anti-Boeing thing going on with Slashdot?
Re: Could someone please explain to me (Score:2)
Are the boeing and inet comments coming from folks who are also in Reddits trading subreddits? The patterns and language seem kind of meme-like.
As old as the hills (Score:2)
This problem is as old as the hills. When the bean counters take over from the founders and engineers, innovation stops, the smart money cleans up and gets out, and eventually the golden goose has no more eggs.
E.g., AT&T, IBM, Xerox, RCA...
Wow, look at teh "invisible hand of the market" (Score:2)
Incentivizing not for production or innovation, but on ROI. Who could have imagined that outcome?
Step 1: Outlaw stock buybacks (Score:1)
It wasn't that long ago (1982) that stock buybacks were not allowed ... Deemed as market manipulation.
Very low taxes on dividends also encourage companies to prioritize returning money to shareholders over long term growth and investment.
The government could easily change the incentives and have corporations behave more strategically, but the government's primary function is to preserve and enhance the wealth of the richest 0.01%.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Imagine two scenarios:
1) Stock dividends are taxed at 0%
2) Stock dividends are taxed at 100%
In the second scenario, shareholders would want the company not to issue any dividends at all, and instead grow the company so the stock price appreciates over time.
In the first scenario, shareholders would want the company to issue as many dividends as possible.
Re: (Score:3)
In your 2nd scenario, the stock market will collapse beacuse only the biggest shareholders can secretly put company's profit into their pocket and the stock is useless to small holders. Stock price is usually a reflection of expectation on how much the stock will pay out dividends (or buyback) in near future, except when people use them to gamble against each other.
My alternative proposal is: let people who own the stock longer have more decision power. So it will be harder for predators to steal power i
This YT channel is the best on Chip Fab Companies (Score:1)