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TMFBent (99.85)

Rating Bear's Earnings PR

Recs

9

December 20, 2007 – Comments (3) | RELATED TICKERS: BSC , GS , MS

*Style: 6.5

Content: 7

Jargon (lack thereof): 6

Weakest Point:

“When Bear Stearns became a public company, consistent with our entrepreneurial roots and to ensure alignment of interests between management and shareholders, we designed our executive compensation programs to pay for performance. In a year in which we produced unacceptable results, the plans are working as they were designed -- and the members of the executive committee will not receive any bonuses for 2007.”

This is better than rewarding incompetence in 2007, but what of the bonuses paid out in prior years, when the groudnwork for this debale was set down? If Bear (and every other firm out there) set compensation packages aimed a longer-term alignment with shareholder value, they wouldn't be so quick to slice open the golden geese to get at the eggs.

These guys can afford an off year, so don't expect the culture to change that much.So long as they can milk bonuses offa few year's worth of chasing the shiny thing, knowing that they might have to see a single lean year later, they'll continue to chase the shiny things. Heck, if they're lucky, they can get fired like their peers and suffer with their multimillion-dollar parachutes.

Strongest Point:

At least Bear hasn't gone a-beggin. 

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Read the whole thing here. 

*Out of a possible ten 

3 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On December 20, 2007 at 1:05 PM, GS751 (28.01) wrote:

Heck, if they're lucky, they can get fired like their peers and suffer with their multimillion-dollar parachutes.

haha.  gonna add that my list of funniest things heard on caps.

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#2) On December 21, 2007 at 9:07 AM, TDRH (99.85) wrote:

If these were Japanese companies the heads of Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns would accept responsibility and resign- basically fall on the knife and accept responsibility for their ineptitiude.   Here, the leaders elect buddies to the board and have them approve their bonuses and options- on a bad year they can get a way with waiving their bonuses.

My questions is "Are there any executives that are worth their compensation and or stock options?"    In sports you can analyze individuval performance based on statistics, but in business you do not always know if they are delivering the goods, stripping costs for short term gain-long term pain,  or riding an economic cycle.  It ticks me off to watch executitives with companies like NOV, that receive their stock options one day and cash them the next day.........what kind of message does that send to the market, and their stake holders.  Will get off my soapbox now, guess I should feel sorry for the executives and their families for their "empty" Christmas stockings.

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#3) On December 24, 2007 at 2:00 PM, SidBord (< 20) wrote:

TDRH queries "My questions is "Are there any executives that are worth their compensation and or stock options?"  "

I've often wondered what the top executives do to justify their "rewards".  It seems like the middle level guys are probably the ones who deserve bigger rewards.   In baseball, I can see when a player deserves rewarding.  I'm not sure how they reward the team managers.   It always seemed to me that the top executives are rewarded for becoming the top executives, not for what they acccomplish.   On a day-to-day basis, what do the executives contribute??  How do you identify their contributions to the extent that you can say that a particular executive has made the company more successful than,say, the guy in the middle who figured out how to make a better solar cell?   Doesn't seem to be any relation between the executive contribution (whatever that is)  and what his bonus size is at year end.

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