VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow is quoted in the Wall Street Journal about the mind-boggling $1.7 billion departure package for Adam Neumann at We Work, which includes $187 million in consulting fees and a $500 million line of credit. “There used to be crazy departure packages in the past, and shareholders really objected,” said Nell…
Tag: CEO
WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s $1.7 billion payout from Softbank is unprecedented – Vox
VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow is quoted about the astounding payout to ex-We Work CEO Adam Neumann — $1.7 billion for his stock plus $185 million for consulting services AND a $500 million credit line. “He basically said, ‘This is what I need in order to leave,’ and they’re finding different ways to categorize that…
Has La Croix Lost Its Fizz?
National Beverage, producer of La Croix flavored fizzy water, has been criticized for the tone and substance of its recent filings. On Forbes, Jim Collins calls CEO Nick Caporella’s statement “bizarre” and points out the contradictions in its explanation for reduced revenues: La Croix sales are falling due to litigation, but that litigation will not…
More U.S. Companies Separating Chief Executive and Chairman Roles – WSJ
A push by corporate governance experts, shareholders and, in some cases, regulators to untangle the chairman and chief executive positions at U.S. public companies is gaining traction.The percentage of S&P 500 companies whose chief executives also serve as chairman reached 45.6% in 2018, compared with 48.7% the year before and the lowest percentage in at…
How Did an Auto CEO Keep his Illness a Secret From the Directors and Shareholders For a Year?
When someone becomes a CEO, he or she relinquishes the luxury of privacy, including regular updates to the board on health issues. If the CEO is important enough to be worth all of that money, then his or her health is a risk factor the board must be able to consider and plan for. The…
How a Buddhist monk turned CEO revived Japan Airlines from bankruptcy – Channel NewsAsia
A disastrous privatization led to bankruptcy. A CEO who was a Buddhist monk, took no salary, and made employees the priority turned it around. Mr Inamori, ordained a monk in 1997, may not have been a conventional choice, but he had a reputation for challenging common business practices and putting people before profit, a philosophy…
Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously | PBS NewsHour
Denise Cummins writes about what happened when Sears was run according to the principles of Ayn Rand. SPOILER ALERT: Chaos, followed by bankruptcy. Think Lord of the Flies in the executive suite. In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to Rand’s principles. Lampert broke the company into more than 30…
GE Whiz: If Only Flannery’s Ouster Was Unique
No one knows more about CEO succession — the good, the bad, and the very ugly — than Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He has some thoughtful comments on the second CEO within a year at GE. He insists it is not unheard of and makes the key point that there was a major turnover on the…
JD CEO’s arrest steps on governance landmine – Breakingviews
Emphasis added to this story about a “governance landmine” that illustrates the problem with governance structure that is overweighted in favor of the CEO. JD.com shareholders just got an abrupt reminder about their investment. Richard Liu, the founder and chief executive of the $45 billion Chinese e-commerce company, was arrested in the United States for alleged…
Narcissistic CEOs Can Mean Big Legal Bills | Stanford Graduate School of Business
At first glance, it might seem worth it for a company’s shareholders to tolerate a narcissistic CEO’s abusive personality, given the outsized success that Jobs and others like him have achieved. But narcissistic CEOs’ rampant hubris also has a serious downside, [Charles] O’Reilly notes. Studies indicate that they’re more likely to engage in questionable tax-avoidance…
