Houston Chronicle (December 2)
Twenty years on, “Enron remains a cautionary tale of corporate hubris and fraud. It’s lessons still carry weight, especially as Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes stands trial, accused of defrauding investors and patients about the viability and accuracy of its medical testing technology.”
Tags: Accuracy, Cautionary tale, CEO, Corporate hubris, Defrauding, Enron, Fraud, Holmes, Investors, Patients, Theranos, Trial, Twenty years
Newsweek (October 23)
Ken Fisher, the CEO and founder of Fisher Investments, “has lost more than a billion dollars in client investments following remarks that have been widely denounced as sexist and offensive.” Fortunately, investors called him out. “As long as there are still men who think it’s OK to speak in these ways, industries will continue to send the message that business is a ‘man’s world.’ It’s time to end this — and to bury workplace sexism once and for all.”
Bloomberg (September 10)
“In Japan, is there one standard of justice for Japanese executives and another for non-Japanese executives? The forced resignation on Monday of Nissan Motor Co.’s chief executive officer, Hiroto Saikawa, certainly seems to suggest as much.” At this point, “would any non-Japanese manager really be interested in taking the helm at Nissan given what happened to Ghosn? It’s a little hard to envision.”
Tags: CEO, Executives, Japan, Japanese, Justice, Nissan, Non-Japanese, Resignation, Saikawa, Standard
Wall Street Journal (December 10)
Carlos Ghosn’s reported plan to fire CEO Hiroto Saikawa “adds a new twist to the drama inside Nissan…. While that internal investigation was going on, Mr. Ghosn was growing increasingly dissatisfied with Mr. Saikawa’s handling of business problems at Nissan including a slowdown in U.S. sales and repeated quality issues in Japan, say people familiar with the matter.”
Tags: CEO, Dissatisfied, Drama, Fire, Ghosn, Investigation, Nissan, Quality issues, Saikawa, Slowdown, Twist, U.S.
Fortune (January 4)
“By the end of the first three working days of the year, the U.K.’s top bosses will each have earned on average as much as a typical worker will take home in all of 2018, according to a report. While the difference in compensation appears stark, it narrowed slightly compared with the previous year.” Studies show “earnings for CEOs in the U.K.’s benchmark FTSE 100 dropped by a fifth in 2016 to 4.5 million pounds ($5.4 million)” and that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio stood at around 120 to 1, much lower than the 347 to 1 of S&P 500 companies.
Chicago Tribune (January 2)
“Who said: ‘Find out what the other team wants to do. Then take it away from them.’ Could have been Uber’s CEO, but no, it was George Halas, founder of the Bears.” As the Chicago Bears look for a new coach, it’s worth contemplating “heavy industries, or digital startups… business and sports share immutable truths about organizational ability and consequential success. Much of work life is a competition, right? Good bosses, like good coaches, are strategists and motivators who build strong teams. Games like football teach those lessons in fundamental ways that are useful in every field, including non-contact sports like accounting.”
Tags: Accounting, Bears, CEO, Chicago, Coach, Competition, Digital startups, Halas, Heavy industries, Motivators, Sports, Strategists, Uber
Wall Street Journal (July 5)
“The bosses of America’s biggest and best-known companies are learning a common lesson this year: The pay is great, but job security has rarely been shakier.” During the first five months of 2017, CEO turnover at large companies more than doubled. The “churn reflects a broader reality for the country’s business elite: An array of challenges—from increasing impatience on Wall Street and in boardrooms to a corporate landscape rapidly transformed by new technologies and rival upstarts—have made the top job tougher and more precarious than just a few years ago.” Today, “even the biggest companies are vulnerable to shareholder disapproval and competitive forces that their size and stature once helped them fend off.”
Tags: Boardrooms, CEO, Challenges, Elite, Impatience, Job security, Pay, Shareholders, Technologies, Turnover, U.S., Upstarts, Wall Street
The Economist (June 17)
Replacing Jeff Immelt at GE’s helm, new CEO John Flannery will need “to deal with GE’s soggy financial performance. Trian, an activist hedge fund, owns a stake in GE and, behind the scenes, has probably been agitating for change. Unless the numbers improve soon, pressure may mount for GE to break itself up. That would be a bad idea: what it now needs is less re-engineering and more consistent execution. At least Mr Flannery, unlike Mr Immelt, takes the helm when expectations are low.”
Tags: Activist, CEO, Execution, Expectations, Flannery, GE, Hedge-fund, Immelt, Performance, Re-engineering, Trian
New York Times (December 13)
Donald Trump’s choice of CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State looks certain to face opposition, even within his own party. “Why would Mr. Trump choose as his top diplomat a man whose every decision or action would be tainted by suspicion that he’s capitulating to Russian interests or those of the oil industry, having spent his entire career at Exxon Mobil?”
Tags: CEO, Diplomat, Exxon Mobil, Oil industry, Opposition, Rex Tillerson, Russia, Secretary of state, Tainted, Trump
San Francisco Chronicle (September 28)
“Score one for public shaming. Following widespread outrage… Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf has said he’ll forfeit his outstanding stock awards of about $41 million.” That’s not enough. He should resign. “The public is worn out by Wall Street’s bad behavior — and it’s also tired of watching low-level employees be scapegoated while top executives get off scot-free.”
Tags: Bad behavior, CEO, Forfeit, Outrage, Public shaming, Resign, Scapegoats, Stock awards, Stumpf, Wall Street, Wells Fargo
