Mutual funds, investment options in 2070? Options

[Snow_Fox]

We hear a lot about the AAA corps and their subsidaries in Sr, stocks and info and all that fun but do you think there will still be mutual funds?

For those who don't know in RL I'm a licenced trader. What made me think of this was the other day i was talking with my mother and commented that 'we' owned a particualrly large company (No I'm not saying which one there is a real question of propritary knowledge here ) My mother raised an eye brow. "Own?"
I poinited out that we had $1 Billion in their stock, 'oh.' Which leads me to wonder about mutual funds and their undiciplined sister, the hedge fund.

Even if you cna't buy enough stock in a particular AAA corp or even AA stock to make a differnece, couldn't a mutual fund. (only a fund calling itself diversified has to worry about limits of stock held in a particularly company)

another example was in the first season of ghost in the shell, a hedge fund based on rare wines. (I'm gonna call that one a way risky investment and if any of you ever are sitting in my office as a client, I'm not buying it for you.

[Backgammon]

I think SR is run by hedge funds.

Mutual funds? I think they'll be out of fashion.

[Larme]

I don't see financial services having the same clout in Shadowrun that they do today. The reason being that corporations are not so much business entities as they are distributed, sovereign nations. An ownership stake in a megacorporation is having your finger on the red button, literally. For this reason, they are jealously guarded by the most ruthless people in the world. If you think corporate law allows management to entrench themselves today, imagine what it would be like in a world where corporations are more powerful than national governments. The only entity powerful enough to make a takeover bid against a megacorp is another megacorp, and even then it usually fails. Think about it -- what you're proposing is a mutual fund powerful enough to buy out the equivalent of the modern day United States of America. I think the scale of corporations to governments today can accurately represent the status of investment funds to corporations in the 2070's. Sure, your big hedge funds can toss around a lot of capital, but your megacorporations have an annual budget that dwarfs the cash flow of any non-AAA rated entity.

So I guess what I'm saying is that to swim with the big fish, you need to be a big fish. Today's big fish are governments, and there isn't a bank in existence that could "buy" a major nation. It takes a government to buy out a government -- the US doesn't ask Goldman Sachs for money with it's in a bind, it asks other countries, like China. In Shadowrun, the same will be true for megacorps. It takes a megacorp to buy a megacorp, and nothing less will do. In my opinion, no mutual fund could even dream of becoming that big. I just can't imagine a mutual fund with the buying power to take a bite out of the USA, and I think that translates into it being equally unimaginable that there would be a mutual fund with the buying power to take a bite out of megacorp.

[Cthulhudreams]

The financial services sector in SR makes no sense and requires extensive use of the 'I belive' button

A) Professional services and consulting firms - how can that even work in that sort of enviroment?

B) Getting an audit - again.. all the corps are actually operating illegally and hiring mercenaries to commit crimes. External audit is going to be pretty naff if it doesn't find the blackops division, and pretty much dead if it does.

C) Banks are just non functional in a high fraud environment. Canonically you can buy an agent, a spoof program and then just rip people off for money to fund your lifestyle. You think credit card fraud is a problem now? Think again bucko.

D) Canocially, the share market just gets all its infomation erased every few years.

Anyway, yeah, it doesn't work, so don't think about it

[Heath Robinson]

the US doesn't ask Goldman Sachs for money with it's in a bind, it asks other countries, like China.

Oh, really?

[Backgammon]

You mustn't think of megacorps as one big entity, as in "I'm buying Ares stock". Each of the megacorps are simply conglomerates of many corporations of all sizes. Many of the member corporations are only partially owned by the parent holding company. So there is no reason why you can't own stock in a company that Ares owns as well. The problem is still basically the same as today. In any situation where you have a institutional investor, they are usually going to call the shots through majority ownership or arm-twisting. The fact that the bank belongs to Seader-Krupp or whatever probably doesn't even really change much of anything - a bank is a bank.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but mutual funds aren't really about gaining controlling power over corporations - it's just a packaged investment. So who cares if you can't take a sizeable bite out of a large corporations, as long as the return is solid?

As for auditing, 99.99% of corporations don't use Shadowrunners and don't have a black budget. There is plenty of work for auditors. The ones that do, the SK Primes and Omnitechs and such, well, yeah, they cheat and lie, but the basic premise is that they don't want the world to know they play dirty. So they put up the facade of hiring auditors, and generally keeping their books in order (well, as much as today, you know).

[Larme]

Oh, really?

Heh, ok, so they ask *everyone* for money, but the only ones actually big enough to make the equivalent of a takeover bid are other governments. That's what I meant to say (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

As for auditing, 99.99% of corporations don't use Shadowrunners and don't have a black budget. There is plenty of work for auditors. The ones that do, the SK Primes and Omnitechs and such, well, yeah, they cheat and lie, but the basic premise is that they don't want the world to know they play dirty. So they put up the facade of hiring auditors, and generally keeping their books in order (well, as much as today, you know).

I think that everyone knows they play dirty anyway, just like today's governments. The reason why governments can get away with espionage and such is that they're at the top of the food chain, nobody can really stop them from doing bad things. The worst that can happen is a stern talking-to from the UN, most of the time. And it's the same in Shadowrun -- megacorps are at the top of the food chain right alongside government, and the worst that happens to them when they get caught doing dirty deeds is a stern talking-to from the corporate court. No, actually the worst that happens is that their stock price goes south when they get exposed and people stop trusting them. But they make sure the public has a nice short attention span (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Cthulhudreams]

You mustn't think of megacorps as one big entity, as in "I'm buying Ares stock".

Why? That is what they do in the books. They even have big IPOs. I think that is exactly how we are suppose to think of it.

Each of the megacorps are simply conglomerates of many corporations of all sizes. Many of the member corporations are only partially owned by the parent holding company.

Yeah, this is seriously what general electric does, and yes, you can buy shares in general electric.

So there is no reason why you can't own stock in a company that Ares owns as well. The problem is still basically the same as today. In any situation where you have a institutional investor, they are usually going to call the shots through majority ownership or arm-twisting. The fact that the bank belongs to Seader-Krupp or whatever probably doesn't even really change much of anything - a bank is a bank.

What? It totally does. The big banks are the top 10 mega corps - and they actually own the biggest currency issuer and issue their own currencies. But these guys have no transparency at all - they murder people illegally all the time. The corporate court isn't going to issue

As for auditing, 99.99% of corporations don't use Shadowrunners and don't have a black budget. There is plenty of work for auditors. The ones that do, the SK Primes and Omnitechs and such, well, yeah, they cheat and lie, but the basic premise is that they don't want the world to know they play dirty. So they put up the facade of hiring auditors, and generally keeping their books in order (well, as much as today, you know).

Got a source for that? It might be 99.99% in number, but only because the corner shop is its own corporation. In a share of GDP, are you seriously saying that the AAA and AA corps only account for 0.01% of global business? That is hardly very mega. Heck man, Microsoft alone would account for that much today, and MS is presented as piddling little half wits. Wal-Mart would account for .6%. Realistically if you assume that the AA and AAA corporations (those who operate illegally and without oversight) are roughly comparable to the fortune 500 in terms of dimensioning, that means over 70% of the market is playing with extraterritorality and conducting illegal black ops.

And if we are conservative, if they account for 60% of GDP, that still means most of the market is playing illegally.

[Backgammon]

Why? That is what they do in the books. They even have big IPOs. I think that is exactly how we are suppose to think of it.
Yeah, this is seriously what general electric does, and yes, you can buy shares in general electric.

Yes, agreed, didn't mean to invalidate that. You CAN buy shares in the holding company, of course. But you can also buy shares in the, err, 'holded' companies. The effect, I imagine, is that buying stock in "Ares" is very expensive because it's a very stable investment. Buying share in a smaller corp has more risk. So if you've got like 1000$ to invest, you can buy 1 share of Ares (almost like a Governement Bond at this point, really - low return but very safe) or you can buy a share here, a share there of smaller corps. Why you'd do one over the other is beyond my knowledge at this point. But you can do both.

What? It totally does. The big banks are the top 10 mega corps - and they actually own the biggest currency issuer and issue their own currencies. But these guys have no transparency at all - they murder people illegally all the time. The corporate court isn't going to issue

Ok, so I don't see why you are disagreeing that institutional investors call the shots. Aren't we saying the same thing? Or did I get my terminology wrong and "institutional investor" != "bank"?

Got a source for that? It might be 99.99% in number, but only because the corner shop is its own corporation. In a share of GDP, are you seriously saying that the AAA and AA corps only account for 0.01% of global business?

Well that number is pulled out of my ass, yes, it's illustrative, not fact. What I mean is that, even with the umbrella of the megacorporate structure, many of the member corporations simply chug along doing normal business. It's only at the holding company level that you're going to find the black ops budgets and more importantly the will and knowhow to hire Shadowrunners. The point being, there are PLENTY of "clean" companies you can invest in. But really, that hardly matters. I don't think anyone really cares if a company is "rumoured" to hire Shadowrunners, or even if it's an open secret. ALL that matters is ROI. Companies that hire shadowrunners are just adding more risk to their image, as runs that go badly sour ROI.


Back to Snow Fox's original question, I did have another thought about Mutual Funds.
I could see, especially the japanacorps, encouraging employees to invest in the corporation buy buying into mutual fund portfolios of the various family corporations. Not very far fetched, some companies (what was it, Enron or whatever?) were investing employee pension funds into themselves. A ridiculously immoral and bad idea, but hey, that goes hand in hand with Shadowrun, doesn't it? Good little wageslaves buy corporate products and invest in the corporation. Mututal funds designed for employee-citizens of the corporations. THAT would make a lot of sense.

[nezumi]

I could imagine these being separated into two segments, stocks with voting rights, and stocks without. Now that megacorps are basically political entities of their own, and not everyone actually cares to have voting rights, securing those voting rights separately makes sense. (If you'd prefer, consider all stocks equal, but there are some people who are willing to pay you a cut to 'own' the stocks, and in exchange they just give you all of the profit.)

In this scenario, you have the majority of people who own down-graded stock. It makes money, but they can't vote (and they wouldn't want that power if they could, because they're so small their voice would be meaningless, plus they'd be a target for political dealing, which gets messy). Then you have a small minority looking for political power who is buying stocks that way, either full-option stocks, or buying the voting option off of other people. This is how someone might have 51% of the power of the company, without actually having billions and billions of dollars bankrolled into it.

Monkey-market accounts would still exist, but really, they aren't that much different from just buying stock in Ares (say), who already has its fingers in a dozen different pots. The difference is, with Ares stock, you know approximately what you're buying. In MM, what you own depends on who the agent answers to, so it might be obscured.

[Daddy's Litt...]

Mutual funds do not give you stock in thecompanies they own. The mutual fund holds the company stocks and sells to you, the client, as stock in the fund.

They exist so that people who do not know about the market can invest in sevveral companies at one time and limit their exposure and/or diversify they investments. The protection idea is so that if any one company in thefund goes belly up, Enron ofr example, you have not lost your entire stake.

I do not think investors would have any pull with a corp held by the fund BUT the fund manager who decides what he will buy might have a lot of influence. Look at the fuss made over Warren Buffet. I think that is what Snow Fox means.
Joe runner can invest in a fund but a run against or for a fund might be a way to influence a big corp indirectly.

[Backgammon]

Berkshire Hathaway (Buffet's compnay) does not offer mutual funds, so that is not an accurate example of what SF means.

Rather, Warren Buffet is a throwback to the early century industrialists and super rich dudes. Buffet's equivalent could be Brackhaven, for example.

That kind of rich industrialist and investor has a definite cyberpunk feel, so I'm all for that.

The idea of non-voting shares is actually in widespread use today so it would certainly continue to exist in SR.

[Demonseed Elite]

Renraku is an example of a AAA corp that is influenced by institutional investors, which is mentioned on page 70 of Corporate Enclaves. Unlike a lot of other AAAs, Renraku doesn't have any celebrity shareholders (Villiers, Knight, Lofwyr, etc.) controlling a major bloc of voting power, so these fund managers and investment firms that hold a lot of Renraku stock have more influence than they would in other AAAs.

[Snow_Fox]

As has been poinited out, having a share in a mutual fund does not give you voting shares for a company held by the fund. After all the fund manager could, and often doews, trade the stocks regularly. At least in more agressive funds. BUT if a fund holds a large percentage of a company may have influence, the fund manager would have influence.

RL this week in Chicago the financial information firm Morningstar was having it's annual, for lack of a better word, convention, with lots of fund managers and investment advisors there. Media outlets like Fox and CNBC were regularly interviewing as many of these people as they could for views on the economy.

People working for subsidiaries may not know they are ultimately owned by a AAA or which one. remember back in 2XS even an educated runner did not know how huge Yamatetsu was. With this in mind there might be attempts to influence people to invest in particular funds which favor a AAA corp- and what a great way to defend a subsidiary without being overt, or to try and influence other people to invest in 'your' company without giving them control by having your own fund.

Or great pay data- that the supposedly independant fund manager is really an operative for Mitsuhama, and he had recommended many of their subsidiaries as good investment.

Corps may have extra-territorial powers but when they leave those compounds they have to follow a code, either the SEC or the corporate court.

[Cthulhudreams]

Investment fund directors having real voting power undermines the idea of megacorps. Seriously, if they are owned by other people with real voting control, those owners are the mega corps. Not Renraku.

And if they own shares in multiple corporations, as would be the case in real life, they are even bigger than the mega corps. Someone who owns 20% of 8 mega corps is almost twice the size of any one mega corp. That is huge, and also makes that organisation more powerful than the corporate court.

[kzt]

There is a whole lot of pushing the I believe button required for the SR megas to make any sense.

First, the whole idea was based on the Japanese keiretsu. But like most of SR, it was based on a comic book level of understanding of how they worked. The fact the a keiretsu is essentially built around a huge bank escaped them. And that is critical, as it's why you couldn't do hostile takeovers.

Second, the idea that monstrous public diversified holding companies have a single majority shareholder. You can build a very profitable company where the founder owns a huge chunk of the company, but when you look at the public holding companies that just isn't true. I actually can't think of ANY large public company that has a single majority shareholder, but I'm sure there is at least one. But I'm also sure it isn't a diversified holding company.

The reason you become a public company is to raise money. And since holding companies get large via spending huge amounts of money, they need to raise huge amounts of money. So Berkshire Hathaway is only 13% owned by insiders. When you get to General Electric it is zero percent owned by insiders. And getting people to loan you the money to buy a majority ownership in a SR mega is just silly. Who can and would lend someone $75 billion today? How can they make their safe 8%/year on that investment? And to buy an SR mega would require tens of trillions.

Third, that keiretsu model actually is the most successful way to do business. The 1990s demonstrated to Japanese corporations that this was, at the very least, not obviously true. This is particularly true for the horizontally integrated ones, which are the example used for SR.

[Larme]

@kzt: Good post! It's always important to remember that Shadowrun is, at its core, Cyberpunk. SR4 adapted some things to be more in line with the modern, but it's still Shadowrun, which was still plagiarized from William Gibson back in the 80's, before anyone could really predict the future of the economy and the internet and such.

[Snow_Fox]

only a non-diversified fund would have a sizable chunk of a company, most want to be deversified,
but also there's the idea of directing investors or protecting a company also.

[Demonseed Elite]

The Japanacorps are not a perfect clone of the classic keiretsu model. They are closer to the keiretsu model after the Japanese recession of the 90s. There is still a strong, protectionist central bank (The Pacific Rim Bank) and there are still plenty of insider deals to protect the Japanese market. Many of these were mentioned in Shadows of Asia and again in the Neo-Tokyo write-up in Corporate Enclaves.

The whole thing about Shadowrun's celebrity majority stakeholders is, as mentioned, not particularly realistic. But it is fun and entertaining from a metaplot perspective and is also influenced by cyberpunk. I think Shadowrun's corporations would definitely be missing some personality if there was no Damien Knight, Lofwyr, Richard Villiers, Inazo Aneki, etc.

[Snow_Fox]

..Warren Buffet, Donald Trump.

The whole point of SR is the manipulators behind the scenes.

I guess the problem is when you have knowledge beyond that of the game designers. I mean I'm professionally involved in the market. RL carry a weapon and have done mountain climbing.

[Larme]

..Warren Buffet, Donald Trump.

The whole point of SR is the manipulators behind the scenes.

Really? What about Damien Knight, Lucien Cross, the Great Dragons? I thought the whole point of SR was the more-powerful-than-god figures who strode across the land like Gulliver among the lilliputians.

It's also sort of hard to put Buffet and Trump into the same category. Buffet's a guy who's made tons of money by being a great investor. Trump is a guy who's made tons of money by being a personality. His businesses tend to fail, but he gets money poured into each and every one because of who he is.

[kzt]

Trump was very successful with some early projects where he was deeply involved. Lately - not so great.

Most famous execs don't actually own a controlling amount, or even 5%, of the company stock in the company people associate them. They control the company because the board of directors (who also doesn't own much stock) supports them and the shareholders support the board and the CEO.

Example: Sunbeam - Albert Dunlop, AKA Chainsaw Al owned very little.
Example: Enron - Jeffery Skilling or Ken Lay (Though Ken Lay actually founded Enron he didn't own a majority position)
Example: GE - Jack Welch held much less than 1%
Example: Apple - Founder Steve Jobs holds less than 1%

As long as the CEO can produce successful results or can convince the board that he can, he gets to run the company without the board doing or asking much. (At least traditionally - I'm not sure how the various changes in the law about the responsibility of the board have really worked.)

In most cases institutional investors hold the majority of a successful large US company.

In a keiretsu type environment there are typically mostly just institutional investors, both interlocking members of the keiretsu and the keiretsu bank. IIRC, banks in Japan are typically where Japanese companies turn for financing rather than to the public market. People typically uses the exact same terms to describe how the Japanese financial system works as they do to describe the US, but they don't actually work exactly the same. IIRC, there are some different fundamental beliefs about the roles of various players.

[Writer]

Most famous execs don't actually own a controlling amount, or even 5%, of the company stock in the company people associate them. They control the company because the board of directors (who also doesn't own much stock) supports them and the shareholders support the board and the CEO.

And this is why they get paid many millions of dollars to LEAVE the company when they screw up. They set up a contract which will net them buckets of coins if they get ousted, then they have the security to do what they think is right. When they are wrong, they walk away with a chunk of the failing companies cash.

[Larme]

Interesting question: the status of golden parachutes in SR4. To be sure, Damien Knight and Lucien Cross probably don't have them, because they can't be fired, seeing as how they control their corporations. But other executives, I wonder. Part of their justification today is that you need a lavish compensation package to attract the good CEOs.

In Shadowrun though it's a little different. Businesspeople aren't free agents -- they work for actual nation states, that have pretty strict codes of loyalty (if unwritten). An exec changing to another megacorp would be like a government official defecting to another country, i.e. treason. I'd be willing to bet that anyone with any real corporate power is underneath a crushing noncompete contract which basically forbids them from working for any potential competitor for all time. Those are illegal now, but when corporations rule the world you can bet your ass they won't be. If you defected, they'd drive over with a dumptruck of legal paperwork and smother you in litigation for the rest of your life, destroying you, your family, and tying up all your assets until you kill yourself. And that's just the legal side -- important people may be implanted with cranial bombs, and/or abducted or assassinated if they try to defect. How many extractions have you run where the target is a guy who wants to quit and go to another corp? For me, it's a lot. A good third of my shadowrunning, even. In megacorps, they feed you, clothe you, educate you, and provide you with a corporate ladder to climb up. The only exit is death, or an escape facilitiated by shadowrunners. I imagine that even a supreme fail wouldn't get you out, they'd just stick you in a basement somewhere doing a horrible boring job, a much worse punishment than termination. That's not to say nobody ever gets out, but they definitely don't leave without a fuss. If they disappear into the shadows, then it's probably no biggie, but if they intend to go work for a competitor, there's going to be hell to pay.

So, in light of all this, what of the golden parachute? Probably a 99% chance it's all gone. You're not allowed to quit most of the time, so why would they reward you for quitting? They attract talent by paying good compensation up front and giving you a nice safe house in a corporate enclave. But I'm sure most every wagesalve, except for the most interchangeable and pathetic ones, know that once you're in, you're in. Instead of a golden parachute, you get an anvil tied to your ankle.

[kzt]

Hell, most CEOs should get tossed off the top of a high building with an anvil tied to their ankle instead of being bribed to leave.

Hmm, as SR is a dystopia, maybe we should have it such that senior corp managers whose plans don't work get the Hitler treatment. "If the Fuhrer knew how his glorious plans are being ruined by these incompetents surely he'd be appalled and act!" In other words, they NEVER get blamed by anyone in the company and everyone assumes that the horrible policies are not because of his direct orders, but despite them.