Public Companies Still Sitting On Piles Of Cash
The biggest hoarders of all are technology and healthcare companies -- some of the very companies that VCs and entrepreneurs hope will acquire their startups. Standard & Poor's analyst Howard Silverblatt has been digging into the S&P 500 and found that as of September 30, companies had $820 billion of cash in their pockets -- 80 weeks of net income, a record. Silverblatt excluded financial companies and utilities from his analysis because they're regulated, which means they couldn't pay for something in cash today. But the others have been steadily increasing their cash piles since 2008, and over a third of the cash -- 36% -- is held by technology companies.
24 December 2009•2 mins read
