Senator Elizabeth Warren, once again displaying her exceptional business acumen, has lashed out at Disney for the company’s recent layoffs which, ironically, occurred to due government forcing its theme parks to close in jurisdictions like California. Disney’s theme parks employed more than 100,000 people prior to the crisis.
Warren criticized the layoffs not by looking at what the government did to catalyze them, but rather by examining Disney’s financial decisions in the years leading up to the pandemic, according to Reuters.
She wrote in a letter to Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger and Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek on Tuesday: “I would like to know whether Disney’s financial decisions have impacted the company’s decision to lay off workers. It appears that – prior to, and during the pandemic – Disney took good care of its top executives and shareholders – and now is hanging its front-line workers out to dry.”
Warren seems to be unaware that Disney “front line workers” may also be shareholders in the company. But hey, how dare a company do what is in the best interest of its shareholders? We wonder if Warren, who was revealed to own stock in companies like IBM back in 2019, would urge companies of stock she held to make decisions that were bad for shareholders.
Regardless, she called Disney’s decision to pay dividends and buyback stock before the pandemic as “short sighted”. Meanwhile, the shares in IBM Warren was said to have held survived over the last half decade mostly on buybacks, tax breaks and financial engineering. – READ MORE
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