Marriott had earned more than $3.1 billion over the past two years. Contrary to Sorenson’s talk about investing in his people, he had pursued the immediate gratification of its shareholders. He had plowed Marriott’s profits plus debt toward buying more than $5 billion’s worth of its own shares, leaving minimal reserves to weather the crisis that was rapidly unfolding. This was Davos Man’s standard mode. Even as Dimon campaigned for stakeholder capitalism via the new mission statement, he and the rest of the Business Roundtable endorsed share buybacks as a means of “making capital markets
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