Quotes About Companies

It's not that you don't want to earn as much money as you can - it is your obligation, of course - but companies have obligations beyond that and they certainly have obligations beyond that at certain times, in the times in which they operate. And they also certainly ought to know that meeting and beating expectations is probably yesterday's game and it will be increasingly so, which would be by the way very healthy for companies. Running a company that meets and beats expectations, and that runs their company accordingly, are companies that I would question why anyone would invest in.

One of the best investors around, Joel Greenblatt, has written a popular, charming and funny book about investing in great companies at low P/E multiples. To simplify an already simple book, great companies are generally measured as companies that can generate lots of profit without requiring a lot of capital. This means that they have high ROEs.

Unfortunately, you don't get artist development anymore. Record companies have become a huge corporate thing. It used to be you'd meet someone [in the business] and they'd have a little history of music. Some people in the companies now don't even like music. It's just a job. So I miss the days when someone would go out on a limb and pick a band that was different. I just don't see that anymore. It's the same with the film industry.

We represent companies from around the world who say, "I want to look at Japanese companies. I want to invest in Japan."

In the most innovative companies there is a significantly higher volume of thank yous than in companies of low innovation.

Our mandate is to find the 200 best companies in the world and invest in them, and find the 200 worst companies in the world and go short on them. If the 200 best don't do better than the 200 worst, you should probably be in another business.

As a result of overdiversification, their (active managers) returns get watered down. Diversification covers up ignorance. Active managers haven't done enough research into any of their companies. If managers have 200 positions, do you think they know what's going on at any one of those companies at this moment?

When we see companies who are in complicit relationships with China, for example, making huge profits by providing China with the very software that enables the state to censor its own people, that is not acceptable. We need to engage with such companies to make their responsibilities clear.

When I took on the drug companies and the insurance companies for universal health care coverage, they went after me with a vengeance.

We're long past having to defend or explain why women should be on boards, given all the data that shows how companies with female as well as male directors perform better. It's unfortunate when companies with a large percentage of women constituents don't reflect that in their boardrooms.

Well, as I understand it, the main supporters are beer companies and the pharmaceutical companies. I'd like them to show me the dead bodies from marijuana. But they can't because there aren't any.

Good people have always been at the heart of the Virgin business, and that's largely because we have tried to keep our business small, and our management teams tight-knit. I feel that small, compact companies, are better run. That is partly because people feel more connected in small companies.

Good-to-great companies set their goals and strategies based on understanding; comparison companies set their goals and strategies based on bravado.

I have been quoted saying that, in the future, all companies will be Internet companies. I still believe that. More than ever, really

All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

There's been a lot companies that have shown "zero to one" kind of growth in the computer, internet software age. Facebook and Google are zero to one companies. Apple's iPhone was the first smartphone that really works, and of course, then you scale it horizontally, but the vertical component was really critical. Space X would also be one.

Obamacare is dead. Obamacare right now, all the insurance companies are fleeing. Places like Tennessee have already lost half of their state with the insurance companies. They're all going. Obamacare, John, is dead. Okay, because we're being - we're being compared to Obamacare. Just, so. Obamacare doesn't work.

We've got a portfolio of companies that range all the way from hotels to television stations and cable TV companies, oil and gas, consumer products, and industrial products. If there's anything that I want to know more about, I have the opportunity. It's right in our portfolio. I can spend time at the factory or with the manangement and learn as much as I want. You can't get bored doing that.

When certain bootleg companies started off and they would take maybe ten per cent of whatever they got and help fuel new bands, which I'm cool with, I think that's a good idea. Most of the record companies are not doing that.

The companies that look after their people are the companies that do really well. I'm sure we'd like a few other attributes, but that would be the most important one.

I may be a businessman in that I set up and run companies for profit, but when I try to plan ahead and dream up new products and new companies, I'm an idealist.

"No one is doing what we're doing." This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.

People thought they were going to make a lot of money. And then at one point, it got too hot, and the government wanted to knock it down. Trying to get it up and then knock it down, both were a mistake. And part of the reason, some people think, is that they wanted to equitize some of their companies. A healthy stock market helps equitize companies and reduce the country's debt burden.

Let's fix what's broken about Obamacare, but let's not throw it away and give it all back to the insurance companies and the drug companies.

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research, but should instead buy or license processes or inventions (i.e. patents) from other companies. In addition, internal inventions not being used in a firm’s business should be taken outside the company.

I think it's hard to have a brand portal and an economy of trustworthiness in one of them that sloshes over into another. But saying that there will be only a limited number of these giant brand portals doesn't mean a limited number of companies; it doesn't mean that everybody's going to be working for these companies. Quite the opposite. Most of us will be working through much smaller entities that simply use these portals as vehicles for getting and identifying customers.

There are not many companies in China that dare to say in public, We dont offer bribes, or companies that operate only by market rules.

I'm advocating for companies not to make women sign confidentiality clauses just to be able to come to work. I understand that companies need to keep some things secret - like business practices and trade secrets - but confidentiality clauses were never supposed to be keeping private what's happening to people within the workplace. It's a human right issue.

Picking winners among the many young companies seeking money is a tough business, even for the most sophisticated investors. Indeed, most professionally run venture funds lose money. For individuals, it's pure folly. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Your chance of winning is likely to be higher.

CEOs of top companies could probably use a dose of not-asking-for-raise behavior and less self-entitlement, rather than us trying to change girls in order to fit into the common mold of what we think a CEO looks like.

CEOs will struggle to keep themselves and their companies current, relevant, and ahead of the curve.

Now it is firstly a matter of a clean divorce, because citizens and companies need legal certainty. Can there be a new partnership with the United Kingdom one day? All 27 Member States would have to agree to that. And the United Kingdom would first have to reflect on what it wants itself.

Too many companies want their brands to reflect some idealised, perfected image of themselves. As a consequence, their brands acquire no texture, no character and no public trust.

Sustainable development is a fundamental break that's going to reshuffle the entire deck. There are companies today that are going to dominate in the future simply because they understand that.

We don’t do business with companies. We do business with people.

The majority of companies on this planet are publicly driven engines. They're always the last ones to change. They're not only the biggest polluters, but they're the biggest providers of services for the consumer. Government itself is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. The U.S. military pollutes the planet more than most other entities.

Take giant leaps. Too many companies are into incremental innovation. The only thing that moves markets is violent turns. Major differences. Don't get caught in the trap of small steps.

I had very good bosses, very good companies for which I worked. I worked in industries where the results really mattered; it wasn't the perception of results, it was just the facts.

I think we should be clear: Companies will still need software that furthers their corporate goals and even gives them competitive advantage. That would be purchased and developed, if necessary, in house, or on a proprietary basis. But it needs to run on the company's computer system eventually, and its perfectly possible that system/network can be "rented out" from a utility.

And these [pharmaceutical] companies are still threatening to sue. And it's like, you know, do you not have a conscience? Do you not want the world to be a better place? You're still making a profit. How much more of a profit do you want to make?

Most companies are very quick to hire and slow to fire, when really it should be the other way around.

The world needs sustainable, profitable, vibrant content companies staffed by dedicated professionals; especially content for people that grew up on the web, whose entertainment and news interests are largely neglected by television and newspapers.

Ben & Jerry's evolved into what it is doing and is trying to transition its supply chain, but this is essentially retrofitting. In the social enterprise movement, we see companies whose essence, the products they make, the reason they exist from day one, is because these people see something out in the world that they cannot accept.

Authors and publishers want fair compensation and a means of protecting content through digital rights management. Vendors and technology companies want new markets for e-book reading devices and other hardware. End-users most of all want a wide range and generous amount of high-quality content for free or at reasonable costs. Like end-users, libraries want quality, quantity, economy, and variety as well as flexible business models.

Giving feels good, but it's also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot of companies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we're doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won't mention an advertisement; they'll say a friend told them our story.

I'm speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.

There is no question that an important service is provided to investors by investment companies, investment advisors, trust departments, etc. This service revolves around the attainment of adequate diversification, the preservation of a long-term outlook, the ease of handling investment decisions and mechanics, and most importantly, the avoidance of the patently inferior investment techniques which seem to entice some individuals.

Now, the United States' response, the western response to this is a continuation of the appeasement that was started back in the '50s with Eisenhower when Iran seized western oil companies. The Americans, the British, and the Israelis, as I remember, launched an attack to try to reclaim it and - or at least the British and the Israelis did and Eisenhower vetoed it.