Steve Jobs could've been incented many other, and equally valuable, ways. I'm not saying it wasn't money well spent, just that deferred stock would have been just as valuable and more quantifiable.
I do agree that if management is the only portion of the company benefitting, then you've got a problem brewing. I loved working at GE, but was always angry at the options never being shared below director level. Of course, when I did get options at my next job, it was an issue of corporate piggy banking.
At the end of the day, these are really 2 different issues, though. 1 - Options, which I still don't like due to their lack of transparency, are less easily accounted for and less capable of promoting good behavior than deferred stock. 2 - Corporate management, which you hope will always be "good", sometimes isn't (but how can you tell?).
WRT SEBL, I'd be inclined to agree with you vis-a-vis Yahoo, except that YHOO had several very good years before it went south. SEBL may have shown some good years via fancy bookkeeping, but that isn't what the picture, as currently painted, seems to indicate. |
