In February, Kraft Heinz’s new CEO, Steve Cahillane, did something unusual for an executive barely six weeks into the job. He paused the company’s planned breakup—the move, investors had been told, that would “unlock shareholder value.” He also announced $600 million of fresh spending on marketing, sales, and R&D. The same release reported a loss of nearly $6 billion for 2025, driven by goodwill impairments.

I’ve written previously about the rolling disaster that was a highly financialized Kraft-Heinz. In 2019, it took a $15.4 billion write-down for its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands, slashed its dividend, and said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was probing its accounting. Even Warren Buffett, no stranger to what is good for shareholders, said it was “a mistake.”

Astonishingly, we now have a CEO concluding that the most valuable thing he can do for owners is start investing in the future again. Perhaps this is the beginning of a turning point.

In 1970, Milton Friedman wrote that managers should run their businesses in accordance with shareholders’ desires, “which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society.” The goal is to make the share price go up as high as possible as fast as possible. 

The machinery is well understood. Missing quarterly guidance by a penny can knock billions off a firm’s market cap. Executive pay is tied to near-term share prices and earnings per share. Some 43% of CEOs report a planning horizon of three years or less.

Source link