The annual report of Alibaba, the Chinese retail giant, must be one of the stranger documents in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives. Like most such filings, it recites page upon page of risks for investors. But Alibaba’s recitation isn’t all boilerplate. Among the risks it highlights are its own shareholders, who may create “pressure from the public markets to focus on short-term results instead of long-term value creation.”
But then, what should one expect from a publicly traded firm whose credo is “Customers first, employees second, shareholders third”?
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