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Dumb and $161.5 million richer
Posted by Fired Fred on December 17, 2007 1:42 PM
It's the end of the year, and every hack reporter who has to work the week before Christmas instead of vacationing somewhere is phoning it in. As usual, lists are popular with the journalist crowd.
Fortune has an epic list, 101 Dumbest Moments in Business in 2007. I know, can you believe it? They only found 101! ZOMG!
After the writers take pots shots at China (poisoning everything in your house), Eli Lilly (Prozac for your pooch), Leona Helmsley (dying and leaving the dog $12 million, maybe he can spend it on Prozac), and Merrill Lynch ("Subprime market? No problem! Wait, what???"), they get to this zinger at number five, ex-Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley "Money" O'Neal...
In August and September, as his company is racking up the largest quarterly loss in its 93-year history, Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O'Neal squeezes in 20 rounds of golf, including three rounds on three different courses in a single day. In October, O'Neal announces his "retirement," walking away with a compensation package valued at $161.5 million.That quarterly loss added up to $2.24 billion. But Stanley steamed away with a finger cocked at the shareholders, right into the sunset.
Make it through the whole list, and you'll either be in tears or plotting the overthrow of the government and some French Revolution treatment of people like Stanley.