From the book Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty, Three Rivers Press, NY, 2007, one of the interesting management stories is pirates were pirates for one reason – plunder or gaining the most treasure as possible. When the pirates raided a town, there was usually a fight, but in preparation for the fight the town’s treasures were hidden or most was hidden. Pirates were semi tolerated by the local population because they came in for the money and left for the town to rebuild. If you stayed alive you could rebuild and perhaps fortify the defences for the next time. This lead to different management styles of the pirates – the extreme was Francis L’Ollonais who was a great strategist, innovator, achieved results and was a complete sociopath. He enjoyed torture, killing people by beheading them and a host of other type of activities. The result of being a sociopath was the locals talked about where the treasures were, as well as giving information the pirates needed. After a short career, he was captured and dismembered because the enemies hated him so much.

Other pirates used some of L’Ollonais’ techniques but they did not enjoy the torture as much as he did. If you are fighting the opposition, one can expect some degree of breaking the law or breaking the normal traditions of the industry. If you want a short career follow L’Ollonais example. Captain Morgan learned lessons that sometimes you need to show you can follow the L’Ollonais’ example, but 99% of the time you do not need to in order to achieve results. In Captain Morgan’s raids – preparation, as much inside information as possible (Morgan used former prisoner’s insights),  confidence to always act if you have the upper hand even if you do not and daring with get you the results. Part of the inside information is learning how the opposition will or should react – what are their normal policies and procedures? How well prepared and battle ready or tested are they? Between 1663-1670 Captain Morgan 4 largest raids were on Granada, Portobelo, Maracaibo and Panama each time millions of dollars for the crown, himself and the pirates.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one of the great attractions to the companies is they have a established market share which generates profits to pay dividends. There are always alternatives and potential changes in the marketplace. In the case of companies, remarkably few people will die from the financial battles, but there are battles nevertheless. As a shareholder you need to assure yourself the senior management and largest shareholders are not sitting back and enjoying the fruits of their past labour and continuing to maintain their market share. If they are fighting for you, as a smaller shareholder, you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

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