Saving Capitalism From Short-Termism: How to Build Long-Term Value and Take Back Our Financial Future

INTRODUCTION

Most people find accumulating sufficient funds for their children’s education and their own retirement challenging and worrisome. The reasons for this widespread financial anxiety are not hard to understand: we’re living longer, unemployment is high, greater tax burdens loom, and it’s not clear how government programs, including social security and Medicare, will deliver the benefits that they promise. Today’s retirement savers also face the distinct possibility that future market returns will be meaningfully below those that their parents enjoyed. Individuals will have to save more, delay retirement, and invest wisely in order to accumulate the money that they need to meet their financial goals.

In advanced market economies, individuals count on corporate and investment managers to build the value of their savings. Consequently, investors expect corporate managers to allocate resources in such a way as to maximize the long-term value of their companies and expect fund managers to construct portfolios that offer the highest risk-adjusted long-term returns. The incentives that are in place, however, typically reward corporate and investment managers for short-term performance rather than long-term value creation. As a result, too many corporate managers are obsessed with quarterly earnings and the current stock price. Likewise, too many investment managers, fearing that poor short-term performance will cause fund withdrawals, focus excessively on quarterly performance relative to their benchmark and competing funds. These behaviors are not hard to understand. People do what they are rewarded for doing. Incentives matter.

Short-termism, the obsession with short-term results irrespective of the long-term implications, was a prime factor in the recent global financial crisis. If we as a society do not address it, not only will short-termism exacerbate future crises, but it will jeopardize the vitality of the economy, the financial security of individuals, and the dominance of the free-market system. This book’s essential aim is to examine the causes and consequences of short-termism and to propose practical ways to combat it.

Part 1 of the book examines short-termism in publicly traded companies and the investment management community. Specifically,

• Chapter 1, The Rise of Short-Termism, discusses how the obsession with short-term performance seriously compromises the potential of companies, the economy, and the savings that individuals need to accumulate for retirement. It then goes on to trace the evolution of the economy from the era of entrepreneurial capitalism, when owners managed and managers owned, to today’s agency capitalism, where corporate and investment managers responsible for other people’s money dominate public companies and the financial markets.

• Chapter 2, Short-Termism Produces a Financial Crisis, details how outsized short-term financial incentives drove home buyers, appraisers, mortgage lenders, credit rating agencies, investment banks, and institutional investors to take reckless, value-destroying risks that helped fuel the financial meltdown in 2007–2009. Each party acted in its own self-interest by responding to the incentives that it faced. The essential problem is that the corporate and investment communities have failed to adapt their business practices, and in particular their compensation practices, to an economy in which professional managers who are responsible for other people’s money dominate.

• Chapter 3, Corporate Short-Termism, explains how the ubiquitous maxim, We manage to maximize shareholder value, is at odds with the way public companies actually operate. Managing for shareholder value means focusing on cash flow, not earnings; it means managing for the long term, not the short term; and, importantly, it means that managers must take risk into account. Instead, many managers seem obsessed with Wall Street’s quarterly earnings expectations game and the short-term share price, thereby compromising long-term shareholder value. This chapter also answers the critics who contend that managing for long-term shareholder value exploits customers and employees, disregards social responsibility, and is impractical because capital markets are short-term-oriented.

• Chapter 4, Investment Management Short-Termism, describes how quarterly performance measurement of fund managers encourages them to prefer the safety of performing acceptably close to their benchmark index over maximizing long-run shareholder returns. Ironically, the fear of underper-forming the benchmark contributes to mediocre results, since funds cannot produce superior performance unless they veer from the benchmark. Short-term relative performance measurement not only encourages a short-term point of view, but also induces fund managers to follow the herd even when they are convinced that stocks are mispriced, thereby exacerbating price bubbles and crashes.

Part 2 presents recommendations for reducing short-termism by aligning the interests of corporate and investment managers with those of their shareholders and beneficiaries. Specifically,

• Chapter 5, Corporate Long-Term Performance Incentives, presents the troublesome disconnects between pay and performance that exist in virtually all publicly traded companies. The main problem is the practice of rewarding employees at every level of the organization for short-term performance rather than long-term value creation. This chapter presents incentive compensation plans for CEOs, operating-unit managers, and front-line employees that would encourage each to focus on creating long-term value as the governing objective of the company.

• Chapter 6, Becoming a Long-Term Value-Creating Company, shows how to gain the commitment of senior management and the board and makes the case that the benefits of pursuing long-term value outweigh the risk of poor short-term share-price performance. The chapter goes on to present a dozen essential habits of long-term value-creating companies.

• Chapter 7, An Overhaul of Corporate Financial Reporting, explains why corporate financial reporting has fallen short in achieving its principal objective of supplying capital providers and other financial statement users with information that is useful for estimating the magnitude, timing, and riskiness of future cash flows. The proposed corporate performance statement overcomes major shortcomings of the income statement by separating observable facts (historical cash flows) from uncertain estimates of future cash flows (accruals). It also advocates reporting a range of estimates, including the most likely case, an optimistic view, and a pessimistic view, rather than bundling uncertainty into a single-point estimate that serves only to create an illusion of certainty.

• Chapter 8, Long-Term Performance Incentives for Investment Managers, begins with the fact that because active management is considerably costlier than passive management, actively managed funds must underperform index funds in the aggregate. Since only a small fraction of funds will be able to beat their benchmark indexes over a sustained period, actively managed equity funds will have to make meaningful changes if they are to continue to attract investment dollars in the future. One promising possibility is a move from fees based on the market value of assets managed (where fees are paid irrespective of relative fund results) to performance fees that align the interests of managers with those of long-term fund shareholders. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the difficult task of isolating skill from luck when measuring the performance of investment managers.

• Chapter 9, Tilting the Odds in Favor of Better Long-Term Returns, shows how skilled fund managers with long investment horizons can improve their chances of outperforming their benchmark indexes over time. Highly concentrated funds with holdings that are meaningfully different from the broad market indexes tend to outperform funds that simply mimic their benchmark. The chapter shows how investors and investment managers can uncover the cash flow expectations that stock prices imply so as to identify the most attractive buy and sell opportunities.

This book is intended for a broad audience. It is directed to the individuals who can make the biggest difference in the urgent battle against short-termism—corporate executives, board members, institutional investors, and accounting standard-setters. The book is also aimed at employees, management consultants, investment bankers, public accountants, corporate governance activists, and others offering services to value-seeking organizations. Finally, I hope public policymakers, business-school professors and students, and readers concerned about their financial future will be persuaded to embrace the longer-term time horizons needed for a healthier economy that benefits all.

PART 1

CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF SHORT-TERMISM

CHAPTER 1

THE RISE OF SHORT-TERMISM

Take care of this quarter’s numbers, and the future will take care of itself. This oft-repeated adage captures the essence of the short-termism that the corporate and investment communities practice. Corporate executives obsess over meeting Wall Street’s quarterly earnings expectations. Investment managers worry about how their quarterly performance stacks up against a benchmark, like the S&P 500 Index, and against the performance of other similar funds.

The problem is that focusing on the short term and paying scant attention to or simply ignoring the longer-term consequences doesn’t take care of the future. It’s true that paying inadequate attention to what needs to be done in the short term can compromise the long term. But focusing excessively or exclusively on the short term can be fatal.

The destructive impact of short-termism has reached crisis proportions because business has failed to adapt its practices to an economy that is increasingly dominated by professional managers who are responsible for other people’s money. We urgently need practical means of combating short-termism and revitalizing the economic future.¹ This chapter, and the next three beyond it, will examine the underlying causes and the consequences of short-term behavior. We will begin here with a discussion of what makes short-termism such a destructive force in today’s economy, followed by a brief history of important changes in the business and investment communities over the past century that have fueled short-termism. The second section of this book will tackle the formidable task of addressing and correcting the problems ahead of us.

The Tyranny of Short-Termism

Short-termism means choosing a course of action that is best in the short term, but that is suboptimal, if not out-and-out destructive, over the long term. And it is certainly not new. The practice has persisted over the entire span of human history, from ancient days, when people didn’t live long enough to worry about the long term and focused on immediate needs, such as hunger, to today’s craving for instant gratification in the face of damaging long-term consequences. Drug abuse, overeating, smoking, and spending rather than saving are vestiges of that ancient attitude. In addition, psychological research confirms that people are not adept at choosing among uncertain distant outcomes because of uneven emotion, limited information, and cognitive biases. These biases include groupthink, overconfidence, and interpreting information in a way that confirms one’s prior beliefs.

In the business community, short-termism has gone from a simmer to a boil. Human nature has not changed, but the business environment has. Behaviors in this new environment have pushed short-termism to the point where it constitutes a crisis that threatens to undermine economic growth, individual well-being, and possibly even the free-market system. The outmoded notion that patience is a virtue that is essential to long-term prosperity is now too often trumped by an obsession with short-term results, irrespective of the longer-term consequences.

Examples of how time horizons are shrinking, undermining long-term-oriented decisions, are rife. For instance, the average tenure of CEOs in the world’s top 2,500 public companies has dropped from 8.1 years to 6.3 years during the first decade of the twenty-first century, further reinforcing their focus on short-term performance.² CEOs today may well expect their tenure to be even shorter. Also, rapid technological innovation and intense global competition have widened the gap between winners and losers in competitive markets, and have encouraged organizations to think in shorter time frames.³ It seems paradoxical, however, to suggest that short-term thinking is a consequence of increased competition because competition is a good thing and is the trademark of dynamic market economies. We must look elsewhere to understand why short-termism has become such a destructive force.

In advanced economies like the United States, individuals rely on corporate and investment managers to increase the value of their savings. However, there are inevitably conflicts of interest. What is best for corporate managers may not serve the long-term interests of shareholders and promote the company’s health. What is in the best interests of investment managers may not serve the long-term interests of mutual fund shareholders and pension fund beneficiaries. More broadly, what is in the best interests of corporate and investment managers, or at least is perceived to be in their best interests, may not serve the collective interests of the economy—a sobering lesson that the recent global financial meltdown delivered forcefully.

The main problem is the practice of rewarding managers for short-term performance rather than longer-term value creation. This practice is antithetical to the fundamental principle that individuals should bear the consequences of their choices. Moreover, what contributes to good performance in the short run often increases risk and leads to poor performance in the long run. For instance, a company can cut spending on research and development to boost this year’s earnings, thereby setting the stage for disappointing earnings in the future. The obsession with short-term performance promotes decisions that threaten the vitality of companies, the economy, the standard of living, and investment returns over the long haul.

These damaging consequences are growing at a most inopportune time. Expanding life expectancies are increasing the savings that individuals will need for retirement. Companies that used to provide defined-benefit pensions and postretirement health-care benefits have unloaded these financial burdens onto employees. Finally, social security and Medicare will become insolvent within the next few decades unless there is a strong economy to support the tax base. If short-termism persists, the prospects for a strong economy will shrink.

Can we persuade short-term thinkers who are hardwired with serious cognitive limits to meaningfully reduce the rampant short-termism in the corporate and investment communities? There are two important reasons for optimism. First, today’s economic short-termism emerges mainly from misguided organizational incentives rather than from the cognitive limits of decision makers. Second, incentives matter—if we change incentives, we should expect a change in behavior.

From Entrepreneurial to Agency Capitalism

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the U.S. economy consisted mainly of businesses that a single individual, a small group of individuals, or a family owned and managed. This was the era of entrepreneurial capitalism. In the words of the celebrated Harvard business historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., owners managed and managers owned. Whether the short-term behavior of the owner-managers of this era was a rational response to a highly risky environment or the result of cognitive failure, the important point is that the owner-managers had to live with the consequences of their behavior.

Entrepreneurial capitalism changed abruptly around the beginning of the twentieth century, when American railroad and industrial companies grew rapidly. A small group of New York banks, led by J. P. Morgan, initially financed the large amounts of capital that these companies needed for expansion. The result was concentrated ownership and interlocking directorates, which raised widespread concern that the money trust was wielding its considerable power to crimp healthy competition among the industrial oligopolies that it controlled. The public outcry for greater regulation culminated in the Clayton Act of 1914, which prohibited directors from serving on the boards of competitors. This legislation, combined with the significant increase in the number of individual investors during the 1920s, ended the era of bank-dominated governance of American corporations.

The subsequent dispersion of corporate ownership came with a wholesale change in management. Large enterprises required more managers who were skilled in operations, administration, marketing, and finance. These professional managers became a permanent fixture of the modern, large corporation. A diffuse and largely passive shareholder base allowed managers to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and limited accountability. The combination of weak owners and powerful managers launched the era of managerial capitalism.

In a perfect world, managers would follow Warren Buffett’s golden rule: Behave as if the corporation you serve had a single absentee owner, and do your best to further his long-term interests in all proper ways. Self-interest undeniably plays a significant role in economic behavior. Predictably, the separation of ownership and control triggered important conflicts between the interests of shareholders (principals) and those of managers (agents).⁴ As a consequence of these agency conflicts, there was no assurance that managers would put the interests of shareholders first. This set the stage for what we call redistributional short-termism, where the short-term behavior of agents redistributes wealth from principals to agents.

The first phase of managerial capitalism ran from the beginning of the 1920s until the takeover movement of the mid-1980s. During this time, individual investors owned the majority of corporate shares. For example, individuals owned 93 percent of U.S. equities in 1945 and still owned 56 percent in 1986, in spite of the rapid growth of pension funds and mutual funds in the 1970s and early 1980s. Individual investors generally looked for solid returns from dividends and share-price appreciation. Corporate managers, on the other hand, were concerned primarily with the company’s continuing stability and growth. Stability provided employment security for career managers, while growth offered opportunities for promotion and increased compensation.

But here’s the rub: managing for maximum long-term shareholder return differs sharply from managing for continuing stability. Managers who are unwilling to tolerate even the slightest risk of corporate failure will reject value-creating investments with moderate risk if they threaten the company’s stability. Redistributional short-termism occurs when managers place their preference for near-term stability ahead of the long-term interests of shareholders.

Because management compensation typically increases commensurate with the size of the business, growth can be an important management goal. However, growth can add value, destroy value, or simply be value-neutral. As a result, uncritical acceptance of a growth strategy can damage a company’s long-term competitive position and its future shareholder returns. The pursuit of growth without credible prospects for value creation is also evidence of redistributional short-termism. Thus, a myopic focus on stability can lead managers to underinvest by forgoing significant value-creating opportunities, while a preoccupation with increasing corporate size can cause managers to overinvest in value-destroying growth strategies. In both cases, managers are pursuing their own interests at the potential expense of the interests of the company and its shareholders.

Since the 1960s, social activists, consumer activists, and environmentalists have argued that corporations should serve broader public interests as well as shareholder interests. This is called the stakeholder model, and it attempts to balance the interests of everyone with a stake in the company. It also makes it easier for corporate managers to justify uneconomic diversification. For instance, during the 1960s, companies pursued misguided mergers and overinvested in declining core businesses, moves that hurt shareholders but benefited other constituencies. Corporate diversification means more jobs for employees—in the short run. Suppliers enjoy the prospect of additional business, and local communities get a larger tax base as a consequence of the company’s increased size. Also, CEOs can bask in the favorable personal recognition and praise that they receive for the business decisions that they make based on social criteria. Critics charge that balancing stakeholder interests is simply rhetoric by entrenched managers who are seeking to deflect attention from poor returns for shareholders.

Failure to manage for value during the 1970s and 1980s was not lost on the stock market. After six decades of relative tranquility, managerial capitalism came under siege. The market dispassionately penalized companies that engaged in ill-advised diversification or failed to generate the highest return on their assets. Such inattention to shareholder interests led to a value gap, the difference between the potential value of the company if managers operated it to maximize shareholder value and its actual stock market value. A positive value gap invited well-financed corporate raiders, such as Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens, to bid