Ouch. CEOs across America, that had to hurt! From an unexpected corner, a vicious denunciations of CEOs across the country.
Carl Icahn, the ‘corporate raider’ that has been trying to bully Yahoo into a complete sale of the company by buying up stock and putting up a proxy board for election, is now a blogger.
He started up the blog quite a while back, and then it just sat there, dormant – leading many amused citizens to watch the ticker and bet how many more days it would take him to follow through.
Finally, however, we see some content (much of it backdated) but most of it is pretty disappointing. It’s mainly a spew about CEOs, their high living income made at the expense of the shareholder, a vituperative outburst about the ‘poison pill’ and an attack on the board members of several large companies.
The grammar is a little disjointed, and his attempts to cloak his true meanings are at times transparent. This is ironic, when you realize that one of his rants claims that CEOs are getting dumber and dumber; a never ending parade of nice guy ‘frat presidents’ who are stupid enough to not be a threat to anyone above them, but smart enough not to put place anyone more intelligent below them.
He insists that “Corporate democracy is a myth” and that the scales are unfairly balanced in order to maintain an extant board against all comers. Board elections are ‘a joke’ and board meetings ‘a travesty’ according to Icahn, who proposes that most board members are not in the least concerned about the welfare of the company or the stockholders.
No, they are there for the free flights on the corporate jet, tickets to sporting events and free golf. Big corporate lunches and fancy Christmas parties, in return for a few hours of work ‘rubberstamping ill conceived CEO proposals’.
Do we really believe that most CEOs are stupid losers who only win be default when the loser ahead of them retires? Do we really think the board members of most major corporations should be ousted by their shareholders?
Icahn has gone for the throat of the corporate world, and I think we can expect to see more than one irate CEO in the days to come. Greedy – they’ve been called that before, but flat out moronic? That’s a little much!