CEO conduct - Mahony Partners

May

2012

Reuters Scores a Big Win on its Chesapeake Coverage

Crisis, Media

Reuters can take a well-earned bow for its coverage of Chesapeake Energy and its CEO, Aubrey McClendon. The news service has broken several major stories in the past three weeks that brought to light McClendon’s questionable financial dealings, including his borrowings against stakes in the company’s wells and investments in a hedge fund. The reports forced the board to strip McClendon of his chairmanship and led to an investigation by the SEC. Chesapeake shares are down nearly 19 percent. Reuters stood by its initial report about McClendon’s loans as Chesapeake made a strident denial of any impropriety. The company was forced to backtrack after it issued an embarrassing statement th... Read More

Feb

2012

Waiting for Bob Diamond’s Bonus

Financial Services, Taking & Managing Risk

We don’t yet know how much Bob Diamond was paid for running Barclays last year. We do know the bank will cap cash bonuses at £65,000 (about $100,000), joining a growing list of banks that have bowed to shareholder and public pressure to curb payouts. Barclays could have reported Diamond’s compensation yesterday, but it decided to stick with the tradition of announcing it when the bank’s annual report is released next month. By waiting, Barclays missed a chance to underscore its commitment to shareholder value, and it left Diamond himself in t... Read More

Jan

2012

Friday Risk Reading: Shackleton

Crisis, Friday Risk Reading, Taking & Managing Risk

I was catching up on holiday reading and came across this excellent New York Times piece on Ernest Shackleton written by Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn. Shackleton's ambitious journey to reach the South Pole ended in failure but became a triumph of leadership, courage and determination as he brought his entire crew safely home after a nearly two-year ordeal in the most difficult conditions on the planet. (It's an astonishing story, and for a complete account of the saga, Read More

Dec

2011

Firing the CEO, Part 5: Glocer out at Thomson Reuters

Financial Services, Media

Tom Glocer today became the latest CEO to be fired, in a year that has seen a score of corporate chiefs get the boot. Glocer, who has led Thomson Reuters since 2001, lost the confidence of the Thomson family, the company’s largest shareholder. Although billed as a retirement, it’s clear that Glocer was forced out after the Thomson family grew impatient with the slow pace of the company’s turnaround. Glocer will be replaced by the COO, Jim Smith,... Read More

Oct

2011

Olympus: Where were the auditors?

Taking & Managing Risk

The hole is getting deeper for Olympus and its chairman, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa. And his outside auditor, Ernst & Young, might find itself alongside him. A day after denying allegations by its former CEO, Michael Woodford, that it paid advisory fees of $687 million on a $2 billion acquisition, the company reversed itself and acknowledged that Woodward’s figures were correct. Analysts have downgraded the shares, and Goldman Sachs suspended its rating over doubts about the company’s accounting, calling into question the accuracy of Olympus’s books over the past several years. It hasn’t helped that three different company officials are speaking on the matter - Chairman Kikukawa, Executive ... Read More

Oct

2011

Firing the CEO: Olympus in focus

Taking & Managing Risk

The messy firing of Olympus CEO Michael Woodford provides another example of the challenges in communicating an executive exit. The Japanese camera and medical-imaging company last week fired Woodford, its first non-Japanese CEO, after less than a year. In announcing his dismissal, Olympus cited Woodford’s inability to work effectively with Japanese managers and chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the former CEO. Woodford countered today, ... Read More

Oct

2011

Friday Risk Reading: Fostering a healthy risk culture

Friday Risk Reading, Taking & Managing Risk

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about risk and corporate cultures. Some cultures produce disasters, like the massive, concealed trading loss at UBS – the most recent in a long streak of debacles for the bank. Other environments, however, seem consistently to produce good things – valued products and great experiences. Apple of course comes to mind in this category; Starbucks, too. Both have cultures that nurture and sustain healthy risk-taking, and I am offering two quick items about them for this week's Risk Reading. I’ve written Read More

Sep

2011

CEO pay, and an echo from 9/11

Financial Services

Today’s New York Times spotlights the rich payouts to failed CEOs, drawing special attention to three CEOs who recently were fired: Carol Bartz of Yahoo, Léo Apotheker of HP and Bob Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon. (See my earlier posts on how these departures were communicated.) While it may spark outrage, these payouts shoul... Read More

Sep

2011

Communicating a CEO firing – Part 3

Taking & Managing Risk

Technology giant HP is demonstrating still another way to fire the CEO - by leaking your intentions to the media. The New York Times and other media outlets, citing anonymous sources "with knowledge of the board's actions," are reporting that the board is preparing to oust CEO Léo Apotheker, who has been in the post less than a year. No formal statement from an HP spokesperson has yet appeared. By contrast, other recent CEO dismissals - Carol Bartz of Yahoo and Robert Kelly at Bank of New York Mellon - were not telegraphed in advance by leak... Read More

Sep

2011

How to communicate a CEO firing – Part 2

Taking & Managing Risk

Thanks to Yahoo’s dismissal of Carol Bartz, we have a fresh example of how CEO firings are communicated. Instead of a well-crafted joint news release, Bartz herself trumped the company’s announcement by sending a terse, firm-wide email that quickly found its way to the press. And before everyone else had it, Kara Swisher at Dow Jones’s AllThingsDigital broke the news. The company’s news release followed the first media reports by an hour – a lifetime in today’s media... Read More