Kwikiwi

I am not a big fan of stock buy backs for Apple. The main issue I have is that Apple has to take out debt to buy the stock back and it has gone from being debt free to having over $100 Billion of long term debt that now costs over 4% to service. Yes they generate lots of cash and are able to service the debt but things can change rapidly in the tech industry and that could be a problem in the future. If they did a better dividend scheme, say 50% of all net profit paid out as a dividend the return would be very healthy and by it's nature always serviceable and they could reduce their long term debt substantially. I know dividends create issues when so much of the profit (greater than 54%) is generated overseas and that a lot of people will go on about lazy balance sheets, and I understand their thinking, but I would rather they had bigger cash reserves, less debt and did some better acquisitions than so much in buy backs. Having said all of that I am very fortunate to have done well from my shareholding in Apple over a 20 year period and extremely grateful for that - I just don't like the massive buy backs.

Like everything in life, there are multiple views on the EU and their regulations - Some are good and some are terrible - The issue I have with the massive fine the placed on Apple for the tex issue in Ireland was that they retrospectively prosecuted Apple for what a country (Ireland) had done in setting up it's tax rules to attract business to the country - Apple did absolutely nothing wrong in this area and complied with every rule Ireland set them - they made massive investments in the country, and received a fair reward. The EU fined Apple - not Ireland - that is absolutely crazy and completely wrong. The USA should hold the EU to account for that as it is totally unjust.

On the other stuff - Apple does not have a monopoly on apps - there are plenty of options open to consumers - people who decide to buy Apple products do so because of quality, security, privacy and the ecosystem safety - for the EU to dictate that should change is just plain wrong and it is just a form of taxation - again the USA should push back on the EU on this.

In some other areas, such as privacy laws - I think the EU is ahead of the USA - also on harmful content and in this areas I think they are more right than wrong.

Interesting read but also very interesting no one looked at Apple executives outside the USA. There are a number of extremely bright, highly regarded and very successful senior executives in Europe and Asia/Pacific. One of them could be a smart move for Apple. One thing about succession planning is you have multiple people as choices but that also means you potentially lose some of those people if they don’t get the job. A difficult proposition but I am sure Apple will work it out.