Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
"well, if bp taking a pounding because they created an environmental catastrophe in the gulf such that they are pressured not to pay out dividends this quarter to shareholders....and that effects pensioners all over the uk....what the hell are pensions doing playing the stock market anyway?"
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The thing is, until this oil slick, British Petroleum was a shiny blue chip, which means it belonged quite rightly in any UK pension. The pensions cannot foresee this kind of disaster, and so you get this kind of scenario where the pensions have to decide whether to cut it loose (and therefore their losses, depending on what price got into the stock) or to hold onto it in hopes that BP can recover from this as blue chips are wont to do from bad situations.
As for the "too big to fail," I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. I'd be more willing to accept "too good to fail," or maybe "too important to fail," but I don't know if BP fits into either of the latter two.
There is a difference between a poorly managed company and an otherwise well-run company who happened to make a stupid mistake regarding all available safety mechanisms. If the accident didn't happen in the first place, none of us would be talking about BP, and some might even be shareholders.
For the record, I'm not sure if BP is a well-run company. They're profitable, though, and so to many shareholders, that was enough.