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Comment by jcelerier | Hacker News Reader

> The question is what their shareholders stand to gain.

thankfully, not the whole world thinks like that.

Yes, and especially not Nintendo, which was a family-owned company at the time. Imagine Papa Gino's going to a family pizzeria offering to buy them out and being told "no, and also fuck you".

Just to add on that... the original founder put a rule in the company that it must remain a family business, to the point that when they didn't had a heir, the guy adopted someone and gave him the family name, to keep the family going.

Only reason the company is not with a family CEO right now, is because the last family CEO personally gave the greenlight to the shift, because he genuinely believed Iwata (the person that would replace him) was more skilled than he was at managing the company... Yet seemly he still paid close attention to the company even after retiring.

Right now the children of the last CEO that theoretically own Nintendo biggest share block, but seemly nobody is sure of that, only information I found is that seemly one of them sold the shares to Nintendo itself (thus increasing the shares the other members had of Nintendo, percentage-wise).

Hiroshi Yamauchi took Nintendo public in 1962. He was the largest shareholder until his death in 2013. In 2008 he owned 10% of the shares, and as of 2020, all japanese individuals total share was under 5% [2].

Here's a financial statement from 2000 [1].

I can find no evidence Nintendo was a family-owned company at any point in recent history. Have a source showing even majority shareholder status by some family combined?

[1] https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2000/001122e.pdf

[2] https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/information/index.htm...

Why is that so bad? Shareholders are the owners of the company.

It’s a common misunderstanding that the only purpose of a company is to make shareholders happy.

It's not a misunderstanding its how companies work. If you make shareholders unhappy you simply risk them leaving. Thats why on average companies do things that make them happy. Oh, also the shareholders pick the board and the board does things for the company. You can see the relationship now?

I know how companies are governed, and it is of course an empirical fact that most large listed American companies are run to maximise stockholder value. But that does not mean that it is the purpose of all, or even most companies. People run companies with a variety of reasons, including things like having fun or making the world a better place. More importantly, companies have moral obligations not only to stock holders, but to the employees, the environment, and the communities they operate in.

You're right - that is a misunderstanding. I think you accidentally replied to the wrong comment seeing as I didn't say or imply that.

Shareholders are known for optimizing for short-term liquidity or value gain, because even if some shareholders have a long-term view, shorter-term holders can buy in and force their views.

However, in many cases this is in direct conflict with much larger value growth that requires a longer investment term. Or in conflict with valuing greater long-term stability over a quick short-term gain.

Yeah, that's how the game works. Its like democracy - people can and do vote for idiots.

When you accept outside funding in exchange for shares, control gets shared. Honestly, do we really need to debate this?

You are the one who asked why it was bad. Why ask a question if you don't want to know or debate it? Was it purely rhetorical?

No, what I'm saying is not up for debate is the fact that control gets shared when you take someone else's money. Its a known framework in which everyone operates.

Your "shareholders are known for" is simply a BS talking point. Every person who has a 401K is probably a shareholder somewhere. All those hundreds of millions of people value long term stability too. Nintendo is not a penny stock.

It's a different thing to say "I value long term thinking" and acting that way, and rewarding long term thinking. It may be that people are simply too stupid to see that the ship is being hacked up for fuel, and thus they put their faith in the captain doing so.

In a sentimental way, I guess so. But if Nintendo is a public company, they probably committed some kind of fiduciary wrong in not consulting their stockholders.

They don't have to consult stockholders in order to make business decisions. They just have to be honest with them.

I feel this is more of an American capitalistic perspective.

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