Firstly, sorry about your friend. This is a huge issue with big companies where they will spend $1M on McKinsey to figure out why the company is unproductive wh

Firstly, sorry about your friend. This is a huge issue with big companies where they will spend $1M on McKinsey to figure out why the company is unproductive when -- if they had just spent that $1M on bonuses they would have achieved productivity. Same with M&A -- at poorly run companies, internal ops will be starved of budget, execs wonder why, and they do M&A to improve things. It all has to do with poor governance and bad executive incentives. (Side note, they are not paying cash here, they are paying with inflated sock.)