Rich and famous and sometimes smart
In our last instalment, Oxfam’s An Economy for the 1% documented the rise in the ranks of the over-rich and estimated that the richest 62 people on Earth pretty much had as much money as the entire membership of the poorest half of the world.
This month, that elite 62 and other members of moneybags international will likely be attending wealth conferences in Singapore and Hong Kong. Attendance is by invitation. Centi-millionaires and billionaires only, I’m afraid. Chatham House Rule and affiliation identity anonymity prevail.
According to regular attendees of such global wealth forums like Gordon “Grant” Curtis of CI Investments: “Many of the most affluent people in the world … are just regular people like anyone else."
Some, he added, are even “very smart.”
Others, however, might just have money managers who are very smart or Panama investment options on speed dial.
More big bucks in the boardroom
Top CEOs would doubtless be on the guest list for aforementioned wealth conferences. The past week’s roundup of some of the biggest C-suite raises came courtesy of Fortune’s Steve Gandel.
Many eyebrow-raisers in the report for salary slaves down on the shop floor baffled by the logic behind board of directors’ CEO compensation decisions, most of which have little to do with corporate performance and less to do with common sense.
Consider, for example, the big bread-and-butter man who walked away with the biggest raise in 2015: Sandeep Mathrani, the CEO of General Growth Properties, who was given a pay package of US$39 million in 2015 – US$34 million more than the previous year – even though, as Gandel pointed out, General Growth had no sales or operating profit growth. Both slipped slightly.
Gandel compared Mathrani’s raise with that of Apple CEO Tim Cook. Apple, he noted, posted earnings 20% higher in 2015 than in 2014 and recorded a single-quarter earnings windfall worth US$18 billion, the most profitable ever for a public company, but Cook got comparative chump change in the form of a US$1 million bonus.
Haven-sent accounting:
Speaking of bonuses, the architects of tax-haven accounting for some of the world’s biggest corporations will likely be in line for their share considering that, according to another Oxfam report, they have squirrelled away US$1.4 trillion in tax-friendly jurisdictions.
The Guardian story on the report noted that British overseas territories such as Bermuda were especially popular with U.S. mega-corporations engaged in “profit-shifting” accounting tactics, including Apple (US$181 billion held in offshore jurisdictions), General Electric (US$119 billion) and Microsoft (US$108 billion).
“Broken at the Top” also noted that from 2008 to 2014 “the 50 largest U.S. companies collectively received $27 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts for every $1 they paid in federal taxes.”
Meanwhile, Oxfam’s “The IFC and Tax Havens” figures that “51 of the 68 companies that were lent money by the World Bank’s private lending arm in 2015 to finance investments in sub-Saharan Africa use tax havens. … these companies, whose use of tax havens has no apparent link to their core business, received 84% of the International Finance Corporation’s investments in the region last year.”
Champagne tastes to China
Where to go for refreshment after all that high-finance heavy lifting? To China – where else? – which is a better bet now that Billionaires Row bossman Big Bill Benson has signed a licensing deal worth an estimated US$100 million with HB Trading Ltd. to bring Billionaires Row champagne to quench thirsts in the overheated Asian economic engine.
In the press release announcing the licensing deal, Benson said the two companies are “going to change the way China celebrates.”
Mother’s little helper: credit ratings
In China, however, that celebration better include Mother.
According to a CaixinOnline story, neglecting elderly parents in Shanghai will be bad for a resident’s credit rating
The report says that under new Shanghai regulations black marks will be applied to credit ratings if residents fail to visit their elderly parents “or send greetings often.”
Further credit downgrades could result from lawsuits filed by parents feeling neglected.
No word on the number of visits required to remain off the offspring neglect watch list; no word either on what happens to repeat offenders.
Suffice to say that, in any jurisdiction, it’s best not to mess with Mother, especially in a city with 4.36 million people over the age of 60.
