“The four largest companies today by market value do not need any net tangible assets. They are not like AT&T, GM, or Exxon Mobil, requiring lots of capital to produce earnings. We have become an asset-light economy.”1—Buffet told 40,000 shareholders in 2018. The four companies he referred to are Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook and they represent about seven percent of the total market value.
However, the asset-less business model was popularized not by these four companies. It is Uber and Airbnb that made asset-less the symbol of the new economy. The two companies dominate the business news because their business models and practices challenge all traditional business assumptions and the entire regulatory ...
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