A polite, retrospective financial penalty where a company retrieves previously paid bonuses because the spectacular performance they rewarded turned out to be a clerical error or a hallucination.
What they actually mean
"We’ve realized we paid you far too much for making a complete mess of things."
Heard in the wild
"Following the restatement of the third-quarter earnings, the compensation committee initiated a clawback."
Squeezing every ounce of utility out of existing machinery, software, or human capital until they experience a total and catastrophic system collapse.
"Rather than hiring a new analyst, we're going to focus on sweating the assets we already have in place."
Translation
"We are going to work you until you cry, because we don't have the budget for a replacement."
The practice of running hypothetical, catastrophic market scenarios to prove a portfolio's resilience, usually conducted right before a completely unpredicted crisis renders it useless.
"We ran a comprehensive stress-test on our balance sheet, and we are perfectly safe unless the interest rates change, which they won't."
Translation
Applying mathematical reassurance to a fundamentally unpredictable future.
The corporate finance tactic of releasing every single piece of bad news in one devastating announcement, typically deployed by an incoming director to ensure their predecessor takes all the blame.
"Let's kitchen-sink the Q3 results so we can start with a clean slate next year."
Translation
Dump all our failures into today's press release.