unfortunately, a common tactic is to milk an investment as long as possible, then sell off or dispose of it rather than spend more money on keeping it going.
Toys-R-Us is a prime example.
I'm glad you brought up retail - that is my milieu. Spent 17 years of my 25 year career doing retail big box stores.
When this happens (been through 3 of them myself - totally NOT my fault, I swear!!!!) it is because the store group itself can't replace inventory due to owing vendors more than the profit of the new inventory costs. So, the store operator is paying $X to operate stores (lease + operation + labor), and selling all the inventory in the store would generate < $X dollars. Therefore you close. It's a no-win situation. You can't reorder replacement inventory, because your vendors are now requiring pre-payment terms (Cash upfront) and by selling it all off, you can't buy new.
IN terms of Windmills - they do have residual value - the leases are worth $$ reselling, the material itself has value, but bringing them down costs $$, so material value < cost to dismantle. Cheaper to sell lease and existing property and refurbish than build new + new lease + new investigation of virgin land for exploration.
The issue I have with the story is that businesses will simply "walk away" and you will have all these collapsing turbines. There is always a buyer. And as a Finance person, ANY $ value is greater than $0 is worth selling, as sunk costs DO NOT MATTER. Only a non-financial person would make a sunk cost decision, and this author seems to adhere to a sunk cost theory of business. I guess that is my biggest contention. Never let an asset go without milking every last dollar ot tax break out of it.
As an adviser to najor finance players in some multi-billion dollar operations over the past two decades - I see this as a possible windfall AND a business opportunity over a possible liability. If nothing less, it would be a chance for consolidation, and f I have learned anything - consolidation and concentration of operation is always a benefit - to the company
If I recall correctly, Toys-R-Us had something like 40% of the toy market even in its final years, and so I am not certain that it was a lost cause. Introduce a few people with the parasite as a business model, and there you go.
Interesting. The article seems to be implying that businesses will just walk away from revenue producing streams, which is the opposite of what I have seen in my career as a consultant dealing with upper management. Generally, once you have invested in a revenue stream, you want it to keep going (hence how cash cows are born). And until maintenance costs exceed revenue, you keep maintaining. At that point, you defer to finance, and you make the finance decision on what to do. Rarely do you just walk away, simply because of liability issues. Better to sell it off (and the liability) than have that Sword of Damocles over your head forever.
IDK, I am pretty forward on environmental issues - I want to leave a cleaner world than the one I was born into with a Great Lake dead, and a Burning River in Cleveland and smog filled LA.But I also don't have a "corporations are faceless, evil things" attitude. Corporations are made up of people, and people make these decisions. Yes, occasionally you get a person making a bad decision, but I have found it to be rarely an innate trait of a manager to do so. I find it the exception rather than the rule.