Sometimes it may be best for companies to hoard cash at the top of the stock-market cycle and use it in the next trough to buy back shares at a discount.
Both CEOs took over their companies near the bottom of the capital markets trough and have worked their companies back up to a stock price nearly identically above the pre-crash all-time high.
We looked at how well those hundreds of stock holdings fared in that same group of 20 largest active equity managers from peak to trough and their median decline was 58%, not a small number.