企业的现金属于谁?

Depositors of banks in Cyprus now fear they have less Money than they thought while US corporations have plenty of cash to hand – $1.45tn and rising, according to Moody’s. But whose money is it, anyway?

塞浦路斯银行的储户现在担心他们手里的现金将缩水，而根据穆迪(Moody’s)的数据，美国企业手头现金充裕，为1.45万亿美元，而且还在增加。可是，这笔钱属于谁呢？

Michael Dell clearly thinks it is his. The Dell founder wants to repatriate up to $7.4bn of his company’s overseas cash hoard in order to help finance his bid to take it private with Silver Lake, the private equity firm. Activist investors such as Carl Icahn and David Einhorn think more should be given to shareholders, to prevent executives wasting it.

迈克尔??戴尔(Michael Dell，见上图)显然认为这笔钱是属于他的。这位戴尔(Dell)创始人希望将该公司的海外现金储备汇回至多74亿美元，帮助为他与私人股本公司银湖(Silver Lake)联合将戴尔私有化的计划融资。卡尔??伊卡恩(Carl Icahn)和大卫??艾因霍恩(David Einhorn)等维权股东则认为，应当把更多现金返还给股东，以阻止高管浪费这笔钱。

This in turn outrages Martin Lipton, the lawyer who invented the poison-pill defence. He believes they are “sacrificing the future for a quick buck” and compares pressure on US technology enterprises to share cash to the “bootstrap, bust-up, junk-bond takeovers” of the past, which “laid waste to the future of many great companies”.

这进而激怒了当初发明“毒丸”(poison-pill)防御计划的律师马丁??利普顿(Martin Lipton)。他认为，他们正“为了迅速捞取横财而牺牲未来”，他还把美国科技企业现在面临的分配现金的压力，与当年的“自主融资收购(bootstrap takeover)、破产式收购(bust-up takeover)、垃圾债券型收购(junk-bond takeover)”相提并论，那些交易“糟蹋了很多伟大公司的未来”。

The truth is, it does not belong to any of them. Corporate cash is no more the property of shareholders than a rainy-day fund of executives, hoarded in case something comes up. It is the product of companies such as Apple, which held $137bn in cash at the end of 2012, having done well. It belongs to the enterprise, not to either party.

事实是，它不属于上述任何一方。企业现金不是股东的财产，也不是企业高管的小金库，存起来以备不时之需。它是苹果(Apple)等公司优秀业绩的产物，2012年底，该公司持有1370亿美元的现金。它属于企业，而非任何一方。

A company, being inanimate, can’t decide what to do with its cash. That is the task of managers, overseen by a board of directors and monitored by shareholders when they go astray. The kind of arguments we are now seeing are not evidence of chaotic dysfunction, as Mr Lipton argues. They are a sign of the system working as designed.

公司没有生命，无法决定如何处置现金。这是管理者的任务，并得到董事会的管控，在他们误入歧途时还受到股东的监督。我们现在看到的这些争论，并不是像利普顿所辩称的那样，表明出现了混乱和失调，而是表明这个制度正按照设计宗旨发挥作用。

The point is that neither side can be trusted, any more than the public could be trusted if someone placed an enormous pile of cash in the middle of the street as people walked by. They are there to watch each other, and to raise the alarm if the other makes off with it.

关键问题是，任何一方都不能被信任，就像当有人在熙熙攘攘的街头放置大笔现金时、公众不可信赖一样。他们会互相看着对方，一旦对方把钱抢走，就会报警。

This safeguard is working better than at any time in the past few decades, as the examples of Apple and Dell illustrate. Neither a chief executive involved in self-interested financial engineering nor a hedge fund manager seeking a short-term return is immune to challenge.

这种保护机制的效果比过去几十年任何时候都要好，正如苹果和戴尔的例子所表明的那样。参与自私的金融工程(financial engineering)的首席执行官和寻求短期收益的对冲基金经理都不能避免挑战。

The balance of power has slowly shifted, from the postwar era of entrenched management to a period in the 2000s when corporations readily handed out cash to shareholders under pressure from activists. The amount distributed by Standard and Poor’s 500 companies using share buybacks increased 18-fold between 1987 and 2007.

实力平衡已慢慢发生变化，从二战后管理层“说了算”的时代，变为本世纪初企业在维权者压力之下愿意将现金分配给股东的局面。自1987年至2007年，标准普尔500指数(Standard and Poor’s 500)成分股企业利用股票回购返还给股东的金额增加了18倍。

It arguably went too far. William Bratton and Michael Wachter, two US law professors, have argued that the shareholder pressure to raise short-term return on equity was one reason why banks over-leveraged their balance sheets in the run-up to the 2008 crisis – and then collapsed. They cite this disaster as a good reason for companies to beware shareholder empowerment.

可以说，这有些极端了。两位美国法学教授威廉??布拉顿(William Bratton)和迈克尔??沃特尔(Michael Wachter)辩称，股东要求提高短期股本回报率的压力，是银行在2008年金融危机爆发以前过度扩张资产负债表、最后崩溃的一个原因。他们将这场灾难列为企业要警惕“股东赋权”的良好理由。

There is, however, a big difference between a bank with an equity base of 5 per cent of its assets and Apple, which is awash with cash. Even David Einhorn, the hedge fund investor who wants Apple to issue new preference shares with a 4 per cent yield, say it should keep $20bn under the mattress.

然而，一家股本基数占资产5%的银行与现金充裕的苹果之间存在巨大差异。就连对冲基金投资者艾因霍恩也表示，苹果应保持200亿美元现金储备。他希望该公司发行收益率为4%的新的优先股。

High margins and a global market have brought the elite technology groups more cash than they have any use for. Moody’s estimates that the technology sector in the US holds $556bn in cash – 38 per cent of total corporate cash reserves. Apple will have $170bn by the year-end unless, as Tim Cook, its chief executive, promises, it gives some to shareholders.

高利润率以及全球市场给顶尖科技公司带来了大量现金，超出他们的利用能力。穆迪估计，美国科技行业持有5560亿美元现金，占企业现金总储备的38%。除非苹果按照首席执行官蒂姆??库克(Tim Cook)所承诺的，把部分现金返还给股东，否则到今年底，苹果的现金储备将达到1700亿美元。

It is hardly a corporate governance outrage for Mr Einhorn to suggest a way for Apple to do so. Warren Buffett, the eminent investor, advised Mr Cook to “ignore Einhorn” and focus on business, but Mr Buffett is no stranger to extracting money from companies by using high-yield preference shares, as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and General Electric know.

艾因霍恩向苹果提出一种将现金返还给股东的方法，很难算得上公司治理方面的一种离谱行为。知名投资人沃伦??巴菲特(Warren Buffett)建议库克“不要理会艾因霍恩”，应关注企业，但巴菲特对于利用高收益率优先股从公司抽走现金的做法并不陌生，正如高盛(Goldman Sachs)、美国银行(Bank of America)和通用电气(GE)所知道的那样。

It would be strange for investors always to wait meekly for a handout, like Maundy Money from the Queen, when a company has lots of it. Lynn Stout, a law professor, notes that “as a matter of law, shareholders??.??.??.??are entitled to receive nothing from the firm unless and until the board of directors decides they should receive it”. They might as well ask.

如果一家公司拥有大量现金，投资者却总是要乖乖地等待着公司的派发，就像英国女王发放救济金(Maundy Money)一样，那才是奇怪的。法学教授林恩??斯托特(Lynn Stout)指出，“从法律的角度来看，除非及直到董事会决定股东应得到现金，否则股东……无权从公司得到任何返还”。他们还不如公开要求。

Indeed, balance sheet structure is an issue on which fund managers have useful opinions. They are less to be trusted on corporate strategy, which is not their speciality. As Mr Einhorn said about Apple, “we aren’t here to offer strategic thoughts on how they operate their business – they are the experts”.

的确，在资产负债表结构这个问题上，基金经理可以提出有用的意见。公司战略并非他们的专长，在这个问题上不是那么可以信任他们。正如艾因霍恩谈到苹果时所言：“我们来到这里不是为了就他们如何经营业务提供战略思路——他们是行家。”

It may give Mr Lipton apoplexy, but there is no harm in investors challenging executives and a board of directors if they are hoarding cash from caution or laziness. This does not mean that investors are always right – the money could turn out to be useful in future – but it is a fair debate to hold publicly.

这可能会让利普顿发疯，但如果高管和董事会出于谨慎或懒惰囤积现金，投资者向他们发起挑战没有任何害处。这并不意味着投资者永远正确——现金可能在未来证明是有用的——但这是一场可以公开进行的公平辩论。

The bigger question, to which Mr Lipton alludes, is not whether the managers or the shareholders should decide. It is whether short-term investors that pressure companies for dividends or share buybacks are behaving against the interests of the long-term shareholders. That is the trap into which banks fell before the 2008 financial crisis.

更大的问题（利普顿也曾提到）不是应该由管理者还是股东做出决定，而是短线投资者向企业施压、要求派发股息或进行股票回购的行为，是否有损长期股东的利益。那正是2008年金融危机爆发之前银行所坠入的那个陷阱。

Executives have to be alert to this, and to repudiate cash handouts that sound nice but would make it harder to build a profitable and sustainable enterprise. They need not follow the caricature version of “shareholder value” that sees the job of managers as to maximise the current share price at all costs.

企业高管必须关注这个问题，而且必须反驳那些听上去不错、但不利于打造盈利且可持续的企业的现金返还。他们不需要遵循漫画版的“股东价值”，认为管理者的工作就是不惜一切代价将当前股价提升至最高。

But US technology companies, several of which could bail out small eurozone countries without breaking a sweat, are not victims of corporate raiders. They are simply being asked to make use of their wealth.

可话说回来，美国科技公司并非敌意收购的靶子（有几家企业无需费力就能为欧元区小国纾困）。人们只不过是要求它们好好利用手中的财富。