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Technology Stocks : Ampex Corporation (AEXCA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rob Palmer who wrote (12771)	12/3/1999 9:34:00 PM
From: WAI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17679

Rob, How many public company executives sacrifice their own compensation when the company is not performing? I do feel like Mr. Bramson has done what he needed to do to keep this company afloat, but your comment is a little (at least) overstated. Go find the Proxy that came with the April 1999 stockholders meeting. I don't have this document in front of me, so I'm working from memory, but I'll be happy to document things more specifically if anyone wants. Under a section entitled something like "Executive Compensation" is the point that you mention above. The "Compensation Committee" (essentially the board I think) offered Mr. Bramson $175,000 salary, $20,000 of which he declined so that it could be used for other's bonuses. I.e., he passed it around a little (but not to us). Under a section entitled something like "Other Compensation" (almost at the end) are the details of loans that Ampex has made to Mr. Bramson and to holding companies which Mr. Bramson controls. These terms have always been quite favorable. Currently Ampex is forgiving $174,000 per year of a $2.2M loan to one of the holding companies, down to a base of $440,000. If AXC averages $7.00 over any 10 consecutive trading days, which could happen soon I would say, then this debt is immediately forgiven down the that $440,000 base. There are some other things like re-setting interest rates on the loans lower whenever the prevailing rate dropped to make this possible (legal?). All in all, Mr. Bramson is being compensated handsomely, if indirectly. In addition there is the performance based compensation due to the large number of shares that we all know he controls. I am not bringing this up to be negative in any way. I just wanted to keep some perspective. I do believe that if Mr. Bramson can transform Ampex into a winner, then he deserves to be rewarded for it. I think he's on his way to doing that, so I'm along for the ride. This is funny: I was going to reply with this note this morning, but I didn't want to do it during trading thinking that it might have a negative effect! Just a little too full of myself I guess. Have a good weekend. Cheers, William