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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (20056)	4/28/2002 11:03:47 PM
From: Barry	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

< All I can say is give more money to Frank D'Amelio. That guy has earned every single dime. He has been a miracle worker. And whether you agree or not, to get miracle worker top executives these days, you have to pay them big bucks. Take a look when IBM was in the doll drums how much they paid Louis Gesner to come in and turn around the company...> I have a couple of problems with this type of thinking: 1. It doesn't take a genius to cut payroll to reduce break-even revenue targets. Anybody can do this. Anybody who can ignore the pain they will cause by disrupting so many affected lives. You can pay anyone of average intelligence one tenth the amount paid to D'Amelio to determine how many jobs to cut to get expenses in line with revenues. If he was so great at forecasting, he wouldn't have had to take so many steps to right-size the company - he could have done it in one shot. Don't reward simple algebra with multi-million dollar bonuses and salaries. 2. Gerstner did not save IBM. He was able to increase revenues by about 3% a year during his tenure during a period of time when technology exploded. He came in to take over when the stock was unduly depressed, and probably used every accounting trick in the book to generate the mediocre revenue increases that were reported to the public. Maybe he gets credit for stabilizing the ship, but sorry - no points for making the ship better. And how much did Gerstner get paid for his accomplishments? The probability is fairly high IBM would have been just as well off over the past seven years paying some fresh MIT or University of Chicago graduate with common sense to run their show. Lets not glorify the rather mundane performances of most corporate executives. There are few Warren Buffetts or Charlie Mangers (sp?) in the world who truly earn their pay.