Don't we all have this passionate relationship with money? People who claim they have little interest in money are either liars or .... well they are just liars. Cash is related to life, love and the meaning of the universe.
We had this big meeting this week in Montreal, where we announced that shareholders won't get a dime in dividends. Sure, folks were angry and threw me all sort of veggies when I was on stage, a pineapple even landed 2 feet from me. I'm trying to decipher the message.
If I make my employees more happy, this won't bring me any additional revenues, right? If I make my shareholders happy, they'll buy more wine but this won't create new strategic opportunities. No, I keep money in the bank. Period. Money quote: It's very hard to do something when you don't believe it's the right thing to do.
Then I went with the usual spiel about CGI looking aggressively to expand in the U.S. and Europe. Boilerplate stuff, really, this is the same freaking lines I've been reading for 6 years I guess. 60% of our revenues still come from Canada, I have a hard time convincing analysts that we're a global company. I show them our Ritual Dancers from India, they like the catchy song but this does not translate into additional revenues.
Another good quote: If you want to make sure that you can power through economic times that are uncertain, you want to go where the fish are and it's in financial services and it's in government.
As we all know, there are fat fishes swimming in financial services and especially in government. The mortgage meltdown proved that financial services is inhabited by crooks and all sort of retards who will do absolutely anything for money, so outsourcing their IT allows them to focus on new strategies to package debts into fancy products. As for government, well, money is unlimited and wisdom is scarce, so it's still a pretty good clients.
FYI, we changed the company bylaws to that CGI will never ever pay a single dividend. If me or any future CEO decides one day to pay dividends, the CEO is relieved from duty due to insanity. If the board decides to pay a dividend, they'll be fed to the lions or crocodiles (both species are uncommon in Montreal, we need to address that).
So keep your expectations low, dear members. And get back to work, I need more revenues.
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