Trump Calls For End To Quarterly Earnings Reporting

Shifting his attention from trade war, military parades, bashing the fake news medial and conducting foreign policy via Twitter, on Friday morning Trump unexpectedly advocated for a proposal suggested previously by several corporate CEOs and most notably BlackRock’s Larry Fink, suggesting an end of quarterly earnings reports, and shifting to a half year convention instead, which was the US convention starting in 1955 and ending in 1970 when the current quarterly reporting standard was implemented.

In speaking with some of the world’s top business leaders I asked what it is that would make business (jobs) even better in the U.S. “Stop quarterly reporting & go to a six month system,” said one. That would allow greater flexibility & save money. I have asked the SEC to study!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018

The proposal is not new: in 2015, the influential law firm Wachtell, Lipton suggested the same idea – which while music to the ears of its big corporate clients was a nightmare for investors and analysts – calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission to consider allowing U.S. companies to do away with quarterly earning updates, which it claimed distract executives from long-term goals.

The idea proposed by Wachtell was to combat what it and some others see as an excessive focus on short-term performance that they say has been encouraged by activist shareholders. The investors had widened their influence in recent years and drawn criticism from those, including not only Larry Fink but also then-presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who said “short-termism” encourages companies to focus on gimmicks that provide short-term stock gains at the expense of long-term health.

As the WSJ reported in2015, as part of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton pledged reforms to “help CEOs and shareholders alike to focus on the next decade rather than just the next day.”