That assumes dividends are the way stock players make money, which is, to put it rudely, boomer thinking. The company doesn’t need to pay you a dividend if your stock goes up 30% YOY because of your ‘infinite growth’, you get your money from selling the stock. This is why the markets are so fucked, because the big trading algorithms that drive day to day trading push companies to overextend and in some cases believe the lie that is infinite growth so their short term investors can reap rewards over a few weeks, then move on to the next company, leaving the first one holding the bag for their own actions.
Doesn’t help when companies that resist this trend suffer from activist investors that use their media influence to say that a long running company is ‘suffering’ when it really is just consistently growing slowly and safely. Pushing for restructures and endless inflation. It’s the 80s all over again, just rebranded.
It’s not necessarily about being a money hungry capitalist though – it’s not even necessarily about rich friends. Many of these buildings are owned/leased by the company. Problem is, that land value is on a company’s books as an asset. People don’t RTO, the value of that asset drops, company has to post a loss, stock value plummets as shitty traders take advantage of the numbers to turn a profit. In a good number of cases, it’s survival.