Comment: GameStop saga highlights problem of boards’ reliance on stock prices
A new model of corporate governance that depends on human, board-level judgement is clearly needed
Last week, a social-media-fuelled populist rebellion gripped capital markets. Retail investors purchased huge amounts of stock in struggling companies including GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry, among others. They wanted to make a buck. But, even more than that, they wanted to punish the financial elites, like hedge funds, that had been betting on the companies’ decline.
The punishment worked: on January 27, investors who had taken short positions on GameStop lost $14.3 billion. But the real ...