Patriarch Partners LLC of New York purchased the assets of Polaroid Corp. in bankruptcy court in Minnesota for $60 million.That's just one more example of money on the prowl.
Xerox announced that it has cut its pay of its CEO, Anne Mulcahy, to only $12 million, a decrease of 6%. Xerox revealed that it reimburses its CFO, Lawrence Zimmerman, $125,000 per year, for the cost of traveling between his home in Boulder, CO and his office in Norwalk, Connecticut.Can this be true? With a stock price that won't budge. With 68% of my original IRA investment in XRX disappeared. With no release date for Erasable Paper. With yesterday's Market Cap at $4.5 Billion. Going down when the Oce stock price went up over 40% since the 17th. With all those layoffs. How many people could get something on their pensions with $11 million + $125,000?
To be clear Assuming this story is true, I have no problem with Anne or Ursala. They are doing their jobs within the rules. My problem is with the Board of Directors and most especially the head of the Executive Comp committee. I need to understand the thinking behind this kind of decision in the present political climate. I'm hoping they have a really good story to tell on May 29th. Say a power point for us little folks and a story for the institutional investors who hold 86% of the stock. I figure if I've been forced to take a hit, their mutual fund investors have taken a real haircut.
Fuji Xerox or Xerox Fuji? or Xerox Rank? or Xerox Canada? Maybe that's why Quincey and Tom are no longer with the mother ship?
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It is inevitable for things of this sort to happen, especially in today's time. Whether you have a large company or not, I think product managers should really take a look into their Product Opportunity Gap (POG) and really see if they can make a difference or not. Many calculations have to be taken into consideration when looking at the company at an All-Around perspective. Judgment's cannot necessarily be made upon feelings rather logic. Being a business man and reading this, I sincerely think a better alternative could be formed. But, if not, then instead of worrying about losing money, unravel some sort of 'secret plan' to your organization to help boost confidence and productivity rate. That's my personal opinion.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is that given this kind of bad comp decision made in today's political atmosphere, there may in fact not be "a secret plan."
ReplyDeleteThis has nothing to do with "fairness" or "feeling" as far as I am concerned. My business interest is the value of my share in the company. I expect to be able to trust the Board Of Directors to safe guard that value.
These comp decisions are evidence either of bad judgment or of inattention. To me as a shareholder, it means someone is not doing their job.
Dear Xerox Phaser Ink,
ReplyDeleteI just clicked on your website. Nice.
Outfits like yours offer the energy on the ground that keep the industry thriving and to keep the globals focused on business, instead of meetings.
It's why honest competition is the most reliable value creator ever invented.
I'm thinking that in your business the CEO doesn't get 100x comp of well paid employees and that the idea of $125,000 for commuting would be a non starter.
I think Xerox will be just fine and the rumors that the compay spreads are probably the only thing that keeps the stock up. With the ColorQube and, (as i saw above) now erasable paper. These are things i can only see Xerox doing. They are going to be there until the end, and i dont see any issues for their stock in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI agree. In fact my IRA is long Xerox and I only do buy and hold in print related companies.
ReplyDeleteThe issue for me is to unlock the amazing value creators in the company. Erasable paper has been "in the works" for quite a while. But when will the product go to market?
The legacy problem with Big X is slow to execute. I'm hoping that with Ursula Burns at the top that's going to change fast enough to take advantage of a rapidly changing market.
My other problem is no visibility on the speed of Color Qube sales. The other globals are not waiting around. RISO's box sounds like it might be category killer in workgroup and CRDs to me.
I don't closely follow the MFP space to see what everyone else is doing.
But I know that some of the Independents have the right dna to make it very difficult to "own the channel."
Great job on the blog, it looks great. I am going to save it and will make sure to visit weekly...
ReplyDeleteSaving this to my reading list (you gotta love the new Safari feature on iOS 5!). Great post.... P.S. Happy Friday, everyone :)
ReplyDeleteSaving this to my reading list (you gotta love the new Safari feature on iOS 5!). Great post.... P.S. Happy Friday, everyone :)
ReplyDelete