The Decades best and worst Returns from large Corporations

This chart published at the Economist shows the best and worst returns from Corporations for the last decade. Ten years ago a share in Apple would have set you back $12.50. Yesterday, thanks partly to recent news of record profits for the final quarter of 2011, the technology giant’s share price rose above $500 for the first time. A hundred dollars invested in Apple in February 2002, around the time it unveiled its redesigned iMac, would have swelled to almost $4,000 today. The same investment in Sberbank, Russia’s biggest state-owned bank, would now be worth more than $3,700. The decade has not been so kind to a number of Western banks. Stakes of $100 in Allied Irish Banks and AIG would be worth $1.33 and $2.21 respectively. Because this chart looks at the 200 biggest existing companies that also existed in 2002, it necessarily ignores both new and recently bankrupt firms.

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The Employee Cost For Google Employees

In the chart below from Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, who downgraded the stock, you can see that Google's cash cost per employee is the highest it has ever been.

 Business Insider reports quotes ,Mahaney,  as, "Given that the company will pay employees more this year, incur greater compensation-related expenses (401K matching, employee taxes, etc.), and is planning to be aggressive in hiring new employees, we would expect Cash Cost Per Employee to continue to rise."

As Google  plans to increase their " hiring this year" and  is all  set to  staffing up in growth markets like Chrome, YouTube, and "social". Its natural for a company like Google  to think about their  long term   term growth strategy, but in the short term, which is how Wall Street thinks, it's bad news for earnings since those divisions aren't terribly profitable for Google right now.

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