>Maybe IBM could have used some of the $110 billion dollars they spent on buying back shares to, I don't know, build a real business? You just answered your ow

>Maybe IBM could have used some of the $110 billion dollars they spent on buying back shares to, I don't know, build a real business? You just answered your own question. As I pointed out, leadership was "picked" by Wall Street investors. Share buybacks and financial engineering exist to keep the investors happy. If they didn't buy back shares and invested in R&D the stock would have gone straight down instead of sideways. As I said the leadership "couldn't get the capital to fund internal engineering efforts for the _scale_ of the transformation needed to sustain IBM's success"