The lotto ticket which is becoming a CEO is amazing. How shareholders refuse to hold board members accountable for this mess is an indication that governance from the private sector is never a good option. My big beef is with CEOs' who come in, destroy a company, ruin shareholder value, and then when terminated get a reward which may not even be deserving for a human being who has added value for shareholders instead of destroying it. A perfect case in point is what has been happening at HP. Leo Apotheker was hired in November of 2010 after Mark Hurd got canned. Apotheker then proceeded to destroy close to half of the equity value of the compnay due to some terrible decisions in his short reign. HP proceeded to do the right thing and fire him but also gave him over $25M in severance for his efforts.
WTF?
I wish I can say that this is the exception to the rule but it is not. In a day where the income gap between the super rich CEOs' and that of average workers is greater than ever one has to wonder why these people get away with such things. The outrage gets even worse when one considers that these people make all of this money and when it is time to cut spending their first item of business is to cut workers. This is a travesty that needs to be addressed by government (can anyone say clawback). Everyone should pay for a company's demise, for employees it is obvious that if the decisions from above backfire they will lose their jobs, but for those decision makers that fail shouldn't they pay a much steeper price for their failures?
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