I‘m no business major, I have no clue how to handle a company on a stock market. But the results I see is that leadership took steps that let into people loosing their jobs. Why are shareholders and management so important and employees at the branches are not? Everyone in that chain should be taken into account.
Shareholders have had a poor investment so they do share in the failure. But the way a business works is shareholders vote for a board and the board installs management. This management then installs leaders/managers to oversee the different components of the business.
These people are the business and are often compensated in large part with meaningful equity. Everyone else (middle managers and contributors) are not the business - they just work for it. They are mainly compensated with a salary and are called employees. They are hired to complete tasks for the managers.
The managers will increase and decrease the number of employees based on the CEOs and other managers plan which the board approves. Plans often have certain assumptions that everyone (managers, not employees) agrees on and sometimes it doesn’t pan out so they have to change the plan.
Sometimes the managers resign or are fired when the plan fails and it was their fault. Other times they aren’t because it wasn’t something they could avoid (economic downturn, rise in rates, inflation, etc) or other reasons (they could be large shareholders themselves).
