Tap corporate cash piles to get the economy growing again

Big companies are sitting on too much cash, says Matthew Lynn. It's time to get the money moving again.

There are many things we could no doubt learn from South Korea. How to create an electronics industry that can take on Apple, for example.How to sustain a manufacturing economy even as wages reach developed-world levels, and keep it going without relying on mass immigration for cheap labour. And perhaps now, how to unlock corporate cash piles and help boost the stock market at the same time.

In the last month, the South Koreans have pushed through tax incentives for companies to start raising their dividends. Now the need for such measures is especially strong in Korea, where companies are notoriously mean with their money, paying out less cash to the actual owners of the business than even the Japanese.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.