I love Mark Cuban, but he's totally wrong here. He said the role of the CFO is to manage the company not the stock. Well, once you open the doors to investors and banks, they become your lifeblood. When you go public, guess what? Your goal is to make the people and banks investing in your company money. Otherwise guess what happens? Exactly what's happening now. The stock takes a huge dive and your company loses a ton of its value.
FB may have put $10 billion in the bank, but the market took $50 billion out of its value. Not exactly a win is it?
> Well, once you open the doors to investors and banks, they become your lifeblood.
Not if your CEO has the controlling interest.
In theory, Zuck can let the stock drop to near zero, and then take the company private by buying outstanding shares for pennies per share.
And there's nothing the bozos with common stock can do about it.
> Not exactly a win is it?
It's a huge win, because that $50B has nothing to do with the company coffers, and has everything to do with the suckers who bought the common without serious voting rights.
No, the role of a CFO is NOT to manage the investment portfolios of stockholders.
I own FB shares. I think the company will figure out a killer revenue model like Google did. But I don't blame FB for the temporary loss in stock value and it's NOT their job to make the stock price go up. Their job is to make revenue and profits, and I want them to focus on that.
The CFO's goal is to make the _existing_ shareholders money, not (hypothetical) future shareholders. As of the IPO it was in the interest of the existing shareholders that the company get as high a valuation as possible.
If the CFO deliberately acted to benefit future shareholders at the expense of current shareholders he'd have violated his fiduciary duties.
FB may have put $10 billion in the bank, but the market took $50 billion out of its value. Not exactly a win is it?