Everyone knows about spies, particularly working for governments. All governments have spies to figure out what other governments are doing particularly the ones they do not consider to be friendly. It is an accepted and expected practice. The practices the spys do for the government are very similar to the work done for corporations. While corporations can be any size, all the larger ones have ties into the espionage world. There are very good reasons to have these ties – millions or billions of dollars can be made or lost with knowledge. In North America, fortunately much of corporate information is public and has to be pieced together, but it can be found. Eamon Javers wrote an interesting book called Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy – the secret world of Corporate Espionage, harpercollings, 2010. There are many interesting stories in the book and one story is an aspect to all public companies is they have to report their quarterly results and everyone is invited. There are folks listening and watching to see if the body language and wording of the senior executives concerning the results and the future of the company are truthful. Everyone wants to know if good results will continue or will a decline happen, money can be make if the stock goes up or down in the short term, which way should the money be invested?  Another story and there should be no surprise to it is prior to the headlining deals being made, all aspects of the deal both financially and for senior executives, personally, are investigated to see what the investment community and competition should do.Using former spies is a key to having good intelligence.

Linking to dividend producing stocks – as a shareholder, your level of investigation can and should be done on a much lower level. Unless you have millions at stake, your investigation can be to ensure the company is a great corporate citizen, maintaining wonderful margins and paying the dividend. It is easy to understand corporate espionage goes on, but you do not have to go into that area to make money. Investing for the long term in good companies that pay dividends is the key.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions