Parachuting In
My God, what a novice I proved myself to be yesterday (The Wall Street Welcome), suggesting that the golden parachutes of departing CEO’s were out of hand. How naïve to think that the new and improved Boards of Directors would even wait to see if the new chief fits their preconception of what he must be. It’s absolutely obvious.
The first thing he must be is financially overwhelmed.
Parachuting in as well as out of the corner suite has become the norm, the standard set by Honeywell and now confirmed by Hewlett Packard. The Old-Boy-Club gets younger every day, but it has its marching orders and the CEO who sits on multiple boards is busy setting precedents, making sure that when it’s his turn to jump ship, he’ll parachute both ways as well.
And we let them persist in this vast circle-jerk that has come to call itself corporate governance, without so much as a whimper. The financial pages of this or that newspaper are bowed in awe rather than outraged and thus the circle closes. No one…