“Imagine, purely in theory, that you become the owner of a corporation. Like a multinational giant with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of employees and branches all over the world. In reality, the owners of such corporations do not exist. If Elon Musk succeeds and manages to buy Twitter, he will be the first,” I write in my latest book. And a bit further on, I remind, “Mark Zuckenberg owns less than a third of Facebook, so he may be outvoted. Bill Gates owns 36% of Microsoft stock (if you include the shares owned by his foundation, he owns just one percent). Jeff Bezos and his wife own a total of 11% of Amazon stock. And these are exceptional cases. It is far more common for corporate founders and rulers to own between one and five percent.”
However, for a while it looked like a personality had emerged – an energetic super-rich man (the richest man in the world at the time) who could challenge the professional bureaucrats in charge of corporations and countries. And that she could tame this new aristocracy, at least within one company (Twitter). Would this mark the beginning of a new trend?
A mass of faceless bureaucrats (who knows Twitter’s board members by name?) trumped personality.
But everything turned out differently. Unfortunately, in line with my original theory. A mass of faceless bureaucrats (who knows Twitter’s board members by name?) trumped personality. Not only does Twitter continue to be controlled by executives who own nothing, but Elon Musk gets into trouble in other areas of his business. Let’s not forget that Tesla, for example, is a shiny nothing based on the presentation and manipulation skills of its boss. And when the charisma of the boss is broken…
