[Ilugc] [OT] problems with microsoft

[Binand Sethumadhavan]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 01:36:40 -0500, V.K.Vallinayagam
<vallinayagam at ureach.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   These are my thoughts. I have heard many people hating
> microsoft or bill gates. The real people who needs to be hated
> are the share holders and the Board of directors represented by
> microsoft. Because it they who vouch the policies of bill gates
> and control the direction of the company.

While others have added a lot of insightful opinions to this frankly
goofy idea, let me just mention one point:

In 9 cases of publicly traded companies out of 10, you will find that
the majority shareholders are institutional investors and mutual
funds. The remaining whatever (25%?) shareholders will the individual
gamblers on the stockmarket. None of these categories of people are
not qualified or interested in running a mega-corporation and their
only motive is to maximise the returns on their investment. In other
words, these people do not even try to control the direction of the
company - they let the people who know about the business run the
company and just rake in the dividends. Trying to control the company
for them would be just kissing their money good bye.

Binand

PS: Bill Gates owns about 10% of Microsoft shares.