The saga of Florida’s “hanging chads”, which prolonged the disputatious US presidential race of 2000 well beyond polling day, also left corporate America hanging.
Uncertainty – caused in 2000 by problems with ballot cards – was and remains the most unsettling election outcome for investors. However, US companies sent a message of “business as usual” during the electoral limbo. No chief executive wants to wake up on Wednesday to a rerun of the post-poll squabbles of 2000, but, at the end of another close-fought US presidential campaign, companies remain largely untroubled by the party-political ebb and flow.
Multinationals have a geographical footprint larger than individual governments’; they can track gradual ideological shifts easily – at least in developed democracies; and while financial targets and leadership tenure are ever shorter, their timescales are still longer than those of elected presidents.