Class-action Suit Filed Against Microsoft Over Surface Write Off 212
New submitter used2win32 writes with news that at least one investor is unhappy with the Surface inventory write off, claiming that Microsoft mislead investors who purchased stock during Q2 and Q3 by not announcing just how slow inventory was moving at the time "The class action lawsuit claims false and misleading information regarding sales performance of Windows RT based tablets. Microsoft has earned a U.S. $900 million write off and a market share of less that 1% to show for its Windows RT endeavors. Asus, Lenovo, HP, Samsung and HTC discontinued their models leaving Dell as the only OEM producing a Windows RT tablet."
Re:Summary: My bad judgement is your fault (Score:4, Informative)
Be that as it may, there are certain legal obligations placed upon companies as far as what information is and is not provided to investors. That's what this is about. The fact that the write-off was 900bn is actually more of a side-fact on this one.
Re:Shareholder lawsuits (Score:5, Informative)
Only if the company misled about the existence of the lawsuit.
But because even microsoft isn't completely retarded you'll find their 10-K will always have something like:
"""
We have claims and lawsuits against us that may result in adverse outcomes. We are subject to a variety of claims and lawsuits. Adverse outcomes in some or all of these claims may result in significant monetary damages or injunctive relief that could adversely affect our ability to conduct our business. The litigation and other claims are subject to inherent uncertainties and management’s view of these matters may change in the future. A material adverse impact on our financial statements also could occur for the period in which the effect of an unfavorable final outcome becomes probable and reasonably estimable.
"""
in it.
Re:Summary: My bad judgement is your fault (Score:5, Informative)
That's pretty much the point of disclosure rules:
My bad judgement is my fault; but if you are allowed to lie through your teeth to me, the quality of my judgement becomes nearly irrelevant: maliciously crafted garbage in? Garbage out.
Re:How does this help anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Unless there are allegations of insider trading, in which case you should go after those individuals who profited unfairly, not the company.
Re:How does this help anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
most of the shareholders are pension and mutual funds who can't just sell all their shares on a whim. the amount of shares they own, it takes months to buy and sell enough shares to get in or out of a stock. they also depend on the dividends to pay their bills to retired folks and don't like to be screwed by management
Re:How does this help anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know where you got your numbers from. but from http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Microsoft_(MSFT)/Data/Market_Capitalization/1999/Q4 [wikinvest.com]
when Ballmer took over in Jan 2000 at that point the market capitalization of microsoft was 407 billion it is currently 227.4 billion,
Ok so there could have been share by backs and other stuff I am not aware of so I will assume you a right and he did put 40 billion dollars of values on since Jan 2000
so the company must have been worth 187.4 billion so that is an average rate of increase per year of 1.5% I can get more than that in in the bank in an on call account. From these figures (maybe wrong of course) he has clearly done an outstanding job.
Clearly such a skill level he has a well deserved 15.2 billion personal wealth (wikipedia).