One of the key traits of managerialism is executives spending vast quantities of shareholders’ money on opulent corporate headquarters, is Apple the latest company to succumb to this disease?
Building a new headquarters is fun for managers. One company I worked for in the early 1990s was debilitated for months as executives spent most of their time moving walls, rearranging desk positions and changing lift designs to reflect their status as grand visionaries.
For the company gripped with delusions of management grandeur a flashy head office is the must have accessory. It’s the corporate equivalent of the Skyscraper Index and is almost as good a predictor that a change in fortunes is imminent.
Apple’s new headquarters is nothing if not impressive. Bloomberg Newsweek reports the building which, at two thirds the size of the Pentagon, will house 12,000 employees is currently estimated at costing five billion dollars, sixty percent over the original budget.
The plans call for unprecedented 40-foot, floor-to-ceiling panes of concave glass from Germany. Before the Cupertino council, Jobs noted, “there isn’t a straight piece of glass on the whole building?…?and as you know if you build things, this isn’t the cheapest way to build them.”
With over a $120 billion in cash, Apple can certainly afford to spend five or ten billion on new digs despite the grumbling of shareholders who have had to settle for a stingy 2.4% dividend from their shares.
The big question though for Apple shareholders though is whether a project like this indicates a company that has peaked with management more intent on building monuments to itself or its genuinely visionary founder rather than deliver returns to owners or products to customers.
On the latter point, there’s no evidence of Apple losing their way with their products yet, but it’s something worth watching in case management becomes distracted with their building project.
For the company I worked for, the distracted managers all vanished one day when the main shareholder of the Thai-Singaporean joint venture discovered they’d been fiddling the books. They probably needed to pay for the office fit out.