A quick update about what people like to think of as "the market": three different multinational insurers confirmed to me over the past weeks that they are not making any money off large corporate accounts.

Their profit margin is *entirely* driven by individual and SME business, namely, the little people who don't have the means to negotiate with far bigger players and have to deal with the terms they're being presented.

Let me elaborate a bit on how it works: you've landed a big account, say Amazon. You are overjoyed and think you will make a big profit out of it. But you're not. Well, technically you as an individual may see a nice number in your next bonus if you are in this type of position.

But that's it. Everybody else is going to feel the pain. Soon enough you find out that the client is high maintenance and that the loss ratio is high. If you are a consulting company, you suddenly realize that the project costs you far more man-hours than you first thought.

There is no such thing as a market price in the large corporate market, because the accounts are big enough to make or break a financial year. Players involved can't afford to lose one & will sell their shirt to win one, because it involves hundreds of jobs and a big P&L impact.

Now, what large corporates have that other companies don't is the ability to pay people to track every single cent getting out of the organization. These people, who fester chiefly in procurement roles, are paid to ensure the company always buys at the absolute cheapest price.

Of course, this practice that is merely prevalent in normal times, turns into a dogma in a major crisis environment like this one. Everybody plays like they're on the verge of bankruptcy, even companies whose shares are flying, so their operators can present outstanding numbers.

So it is a buyer's market where there is always someone willing to take a loss to acquire or keep the business, and what happens in practice is that service providers will rather take a loss on their topline than lose a large account.

They get by subsidizing these losses with the little people's money.

For now.

As small businesses see the walls closing in, leaving their assets open to predation by big money, the pool of available wealth that actually keeps the circus of unrealistic yearly corporate targets running is going to shrink, too.

Meanwhile, in the "services" industry, the findings are unequivocal: large accounts are simply not profitable for other corporations who have the means to land them. They feed the top line, and take from the bottom line.

To come to the point: the corporate business *actually* does not create any value. Big businesses on their own essentially cross-subsidize each other to stay afloat while fueling their nominal growth through gradual capture of the remaining wealth elsewhere in society.

The large top line they are able to keep is what grants them access to capital markets and banks, allowing them to run debt-based operations (loans, acquisitions, stock buybacks etc) which is what the whole circus really is about.

This is also why Capital has become Woke. It is, in practice, entirely enslaved by the financial system and its overlords, which means companies have to play ball to merely stay in business.