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Project Reports
News Reports
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June 17, 2023, Dow Jones MarketWatch: "Bank of America execs blew
$93.6 billion. Here’s how they did it." [Questions raised by
bank use of its "main ingredient of earnings" for buybacks]
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March 31, 2023, The New York Times: "How Big Tech Camouflaged
Wall Street’s Crisis" [Questions raised about both logic and
practicality of index methodology]
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February 25, 2023, Financial Times: "Warren Buffett defends
buybacks to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders" [Widely followed
investor's evolving views of committing capital to corporate
enterprises]
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February 4, 2023, Barron's: "Activist Funds Excel at Collecting
Fees, Not Fixing Companies" [Observations of academic research
challenging value of professionalized activism]
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January 9, 2023, Bloomberg: "US Corporations Are Still Lining Up
to Buy Back Their Own Shares" [Continuing controversies about use
of corporate capital for management of stock]
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March 28, 2019
Fortune: "CEO Pay May Soon Face a New,
Hard-to-Manipulate Yardstick As ISS Embraces 'EVA'" [ISS to
evaluate corporate performance based on EVA analytical model, with
consulting available to companies]
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May 29, 2018 Dow Jones
MarketWatch: "How to select oil stocks?
Find companies that know how to handle money" [Selecting
investments based on competitive use of capital to produce goods and
services]
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December 14, 2017 Dow Jones
MarketWatch: "How to find value amid
a boom in U.S. housing stocks" [Analyzing long term business
viability in selection of cyclical stocks]
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November 28, 2017 Dow Jones
MarketWatch: "Opinion: Here’s a
better way to screen for dividend stocks so you don’t get burned"
[Using primary source data to analyze a company's ability to maintain
dividends]
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November 17, 2017 Dow Jones
MarketWatch: "Opinion: Wal-Mart might
finally be a better investment than Amazon" [Basing investment
decisions on analysis of competition to produce goods and services]
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October 23, 2017
Dow Jones
MarketWatch: "Apple and Nike show that stock
performance is linked to how CEOs invest money | A measure called return
on corporate capital is revealing — and there’s a free investor tool for
research" [Use of consistent, reliably sourced data to measure
corporate use of investors' capital]
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July 14, 2017
The New York Times | Fair Game: "Big Pharma
Spends on Share Buybacks, but R&D? Not So Much" [Increasing
attention to use of corporate capital for buybacks instead of production
of goods and services]
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February 23, 2017
Wall Street Journal: "‘Tailored’ Accounting
Takes Companies Into Alternate Reality" [Renewed attention to
requiring management reports based on comparable GAAP results]
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November 28, 2016
TheStreet: "Elliott Urges Cognizant Debt Hike
for M&A and Share Buybacks" [Analysis of activist proposal for
competitively efficient company's "capital distribution program"]
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August 12, 2016
New York Times | Fair Game: "A Simple Test to Dispel the Illusion
Behind Stock Buybacks" [Combination of logic and
facts applied to use of stock buybacks]
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June 17, 2016
New York Times | Fair Game: "How to Gauge a
C.E.O.’s Value? Hint: It’s Not the Share Price" [Relating executive
pay to competitive production of goods and services]
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May 3, 2016
Wall Street Journal: "The Hottest Metric in Finance:
ROIC" [Debating how to measure profits from use of capital to
produce goods and services]; see also related
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April 22, 2016
New York Times | Fair Game: "Fantasy Math Is Helping Companies
Spin Losses Into Profits" [Renewed acceptance of
investment analysis based on alternatives to reality]
Academic and Professional Views
Third Quarter 2022, Alexandra Reed Lajoux published in Directors
and Boards: "Defying Critics and Curbs, Buybacks Persist: Should
Executives Benefit From Them?" [Update of evolving professional
views guiding board consideration of stock buybacks]
September 1, 2022, Dow Jones MarketWatch: "You need quality
stocks during times of turmoil. Here’s one good strategy for picking
them" [Renewed attention to a company's ability to generate
sustainable profits from use of investors' capital]
April 29, 2019 James Kroll, Marc Roloson, and Jamie Teo of Willis
Towers Watson, posting in The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate
Governance and Financial Regulation: "Economic Value Added: What
Companies Should Know" [Consultant's
guidance for corporate responses to proxy adviser's promotion of its
proprietary financial analysis]
August 7, 2018, Matt Levine in Bloomberg: "Buying Your Way
Back to Riches" [Creating value with confused buyback arithmetic]
June 12, 2018 Dow Jones
MarketWatch: "A deep look at the stocks
held by this money manager Warren Buffett admires | Here are several
screens of stocks held by Lou Simpson’s SQ Advisors"
[Comparing a company's use of capital to the market pricing of its
stock (a/k/a value investing)]
June 30, 2017
Wall Street Journal: "Upon Further Review, Don’t
Sweat the Small Stuff | After hearing from some investors and
researchers, Jason Zweig isn’t so sure about his take in last week’s
column" [Questions raised about reported decline in number of
public companies]
May 5, 2017, Gregory V. Milano and Joseph Theriault of Fortuna
Advisors LLC commentary in CFO.com: "How to Tell Good
Buybacks from Bad Ones" [Corporate advisors encourage stock
buyback decisions based on rational projections of future share
prices]
February 2017, Bennett Stewart of EVA
Dimensions: "STOP Using ROI (and Use EVA Instead)"
(8 pages, 1.1 MB, in
PDF format); see also
related
March 2017, Bennett Stewart of EVA
Dimensions: "EVA is the Perfect Non-GAAP Measure"
(14 pages, 773 KB, in
PDF format); for the
author's video presentations, see
March 10 and July 4, 2017, EVA Dimensions video
presentations: "EVA vs ROI" and "EVA 101 – the EVA Essentials
explained by Bennett Stewart" [Consultant explains
proprietary variation of ROIC based on adjustments and estimates]
November 26, 2016, Abe Friedman, David Martin, and Chris Wightman of
Camberview Partners posting in The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial
Regulation: "Including Relative Financial Results in ISS Reports"
[Consultants comment on proxy advisor plan to present evaluations of
metrics for corporate performance as well as stock performance]; see
also referenced
November 8, 2016, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. ("ISS"): "Six New Financial Metrics to Supplement TSR"
September 27, 2016, Joe Biden of the United States of America,
published in The Wall Street Journal: "How Short-Termism Saps
the Economy"
[Political recognition of need to focus on use of capital to produce
goods and services instead of manipulation of stock trading prices]
August 2016, The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute
("IRRCi") and Tapestry Networks: "Buybacks and the Board: Director
Perspectives on the Share Repurchase Revolution" (44 pages, 1.1
MB, in PDF format); for a
summary of the report, see
August 22, 2016, The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute
(IRRCi): "Corporate Directors Identify Four Key Reasons For Stock
Buyback Programs" [Survey explaining accepted wisdom of using
corporate capital for buybacks instead of reinvestment]
July 3, 2016, Robert L. Colby of
Corequity Valuations: "Real Growth vs Growth Lite" [Rational
comparison of returns generated by buybacks and reinvestment]
June 16, 2016,
Stephen F. O’Byrne of Shareholder Value Advisors with Mark Van Clieaf
of Organizational Capital Partners: "Executive Pay Analysis for the NY
Times" (28 slide presentation, 489 KB, in
PDF format) [Analysis of
highest CEO pay in relation to Returns on Corporate Capital
("ROCC")]
November 4, 2015, Tom Hillman and Aliaksei Mukhachou of Credit Suisse
HOLT: "Do Return on Capital Incentives Drive Improvement?" (3
pages, 361 KB, in
PDF format)
November 20, 2014, Christina Padgett and John E. Puchalla of Moody's
Investors Service: "EBITDA: Used and Abused | As a widely used
fundamental measure for assessing corporate profitability, value and
risk, consistency is important" (10 pages, 913 KB, in
PDF format) [Analysis of
risk in capitalization to support adaptive production of goods and
services]
November 14, 2014, Mark Van Clieaf and Karel Leeflang of
Organizational Capital Partners and Stephen O’Byrne of Shareholder
Value Advisors, commissioned and
published by the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute
(IRRCi): "The Alignment Gap Between Creating Value, Performance
Measurement, and Long-Term Incentive Design" (82 pages, 3.4 MB, in
PDF format); see also
related
December 3, 2014, Mark Van Clieaf and Karel Leeflang of Organizational
Capital Partners and Stephen O’Byrne of Shareholder Value Advisors.
posting by John Lukomnik of IRRC Institute in The Harvard Law
School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation:
"Misalignment Between Corporate Economic Performance, Shareholder
Return And Executive Compensation"
June 4, 2014,
Michael J. Mauboussin and Dan Callahan of Credit Suisse: "Calculating
Return on Invested Capital | How to Determine ROIC and Address Common
Issues" (23 pages, 751 KB,
in
PDF format)
July 2007, Aswath Damodaran
of the New York University Stern School of Business: "Return on
Capital (ROC), Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) and Return on Equity
(ROE): Measurement and Implications" (69 pages, 7.5 MB,
in
PDF format)
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