Church of the Customer Blog
« "Their corporate jets and golden parachutes..." | Main | Audible: A natural fit for podcasting »
September 19, 2005
"Their corporate jets and golden parachutes..."
Reading the news today of Dennis Kozlowski being sentenced to at least 8 years in state prison (maybe 25 total) for looting Tyco of $150 million and reaping $430 million more by covertly selling company shares while artificially inflating the stock value, I am reminded of the pivotal speech delivered by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) at a shareholders meeting in the movie "Wall Street:"
You own the company. That's right -- you, the stockholder.
And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, with their luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes.
Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents, each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents.
The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.
In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you.
I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
Thank you very much.
Substitute the word "greed" for "transparency" and you have a speech no longer filled with Machiavellian irony but a real cause for revolution, hope and deliverance.
Bonus: Listen to Gekko's speech here. And it wasn't that long ago that Businessweek was lauding Kozlowski as one of the "top 25 managers" in business.
Other blogs that reference "Their corporate jets and golden parachutes...":
