On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 09:12:41PM -0500, Robert Seeberger wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "vze3xykq" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 6:41 PM > Subject: Re: Religion and ethics
> > And unfortunatly 'options' are the way to go. How many Microsoft > > millionares are there, people who got stock at >dollar and were able > > to sell it later for 50 to 100 times that? Other companies see that, > > and the employees, and want the same thing. > > I think this is the driving force behind all the corruption that has > showed up lately. It makes me think that there needs to be some sort > of barrier between investors and management, though I dont expect that > to be a popular idea. I'm not sure I understood you. Do you mean investors should be allowed to interact with management? Or do you mean management shouldn't be allowed to own stock or stock options in the company they manage? If you mean the latter, I disagree. I think stock-based incentives could be an excellent motivator for people. In most cases I am familiar with, when someone has a big stake in a company they do a much better job than when they are just working for salary. But the way stock incentives are handled now is wrong. Matt already mentioned that they aren't accounted for properly which inflates the balance sheet. But I think a worse problem is that stock incentives used today are too short term (you can usually start exercising options in 2 to 3 years, sometimes immediately for some executive packages). It is demonstrably possible for the executives to defraud the market and drive the price up, profit from it, and then be done with it by the time the fraud comes to light. If executives were prevented from selling stock or exercising options for, say, 10 years, then they would have a strong incentive to guarantee the long term health of the company. Since fraud can reasonably be expected to be found within 10 years, executives won't be likely to try to profit that way, since the stock price will drop before they can sell their shares. > The company I work for is owned by Tyco. Tyco is in much the same > situation as Enron or Worldcom. Is there evidence of dishonesty at Tyco on the scale of Enron or Worldcom (billions of dollars)? I hadn't realized it was so bad at Tyco. I get the impression Tyco will survive, whereas Enron is bankrupt and Worldcom soon will be. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/
