Is anyone going to the shareholders meeting?
Don't you have to actually own shares of a company's stock to attend their top-secret private meetings?
Although I just discovered I still had about 2 or 3 shares left, stuck way back somewhere in a long-forgotten IRA account. Discovering this really depressed me considerably. Especially when I recently read in INSP's latest 10-K, that there are now only 1,352 INSP stockholders left in the entire the world...AND DAMMIT ANYWAY, my couple of shares makes me one of them!. So when I made this discovery, I immediately set about to dump them all. Then I said to myself, "Heck, three of them worth 75 cents each will ALMOST buy me a Big Mac ($2.49) or a Starbuck's latte ($2.50)"...Cool! But then it dawned on me, the $29.95 sales commission would be much more than the stupid things are worth.
And then I thought, what the hell, I'll leave them to my grandkids in my will. That way, they'll come up to me on my deathbed someday and joyously exclaim something like Jain once boasted during an interview, "Grand-dad, you were so smart to get INSP, when it ONLY had a $25 billion market cap." And I'll be just so gosh-darn proud, I'll most likely wet myself!
But then, yet another thought popped into my head. Attending those stupid jive-talking evangelical meetings have been providing me with an absolutely invaluable wealth of material for the unauthorized biography I've been working on for several years now. Although its working title, "The Wit and Wisdom of Naveen Jain," will sadly be most likely dumped, when my editors review the final draft.
A few actual Jainisms that I jotted down during last year's annual INSP shareholders meeting held on 5/21/01:
"Today our technology is so far ahead
there really is no competition."
"If you know somebody smart,
please send them to us."
"The same metal, plastic, and glass
makes the Mercedes and Hyundai."
"If you share our vision,
you'll continue to hold the stock."
"The stock market may go down,
the stock market may go up.
What we focus on is 25 years down the road.
Worry about decade to decade."
"Our job is to educate you
as to where we are going...
The stock market is not in our control."
"People are scared of us today."
"Arun is a good friend of mine."
So you see that, with great stuff like that, I suppose I must try to attend the meeting, to collect even more words of incredible wisdom and insight for my book. How could I pass up an opportunity like that, especially actually seeing that cute little Jain guy in the flesh once again. And who can resist the sincerity of his Alfred E. Newman-like, ear-to-ear continuous cheshire-cat-like smirk...which always seems to say, "What...Me Worry."
One curious question that several of us wondered about during last year's meeting. Does Jain let out his entire 700 person INSP employee pool, and bus them over the shareholders meetings, as his "support" staff? And if so, do they have written scripts as to when they should loudly applaud his every utterance? Despite the fact that the stock had tanked and unbelievable 98% in the previous year, and virtually the entire top management team had resigned in a mass exodus...during the meeting and the early part of the (incredibly short, 7-10 answers) "question-and-answer" period that followed Jain's incredibly slick well-prepared PowerPoint-assisted "presentation," some unbelievably softball questions were lobbed Jain's way. And the enthusiastic applause to his responses often strangely seemed both ill-timed and way over the top, in terms of inappropriateness to the significance and weight of his answers. And just shortly after the few hardball questions began to be called out, Jain abruptly terminated the meeting, and Elvis (immediately) left the building. Very strange. BTW, I've never seen so much security at a shareholders meeting in my entire lifetime. Cops and these big burly-looking security guys (with short-sleeved yellow tee-shirts, showing their bulging muscles) seemed to be lurking all over the place. But, I suppose, as Jain one said in an interview, "I'm paranoid."
Yes, I'll probably go again, most likely in my "levy" disguise. It always gets me past the bodyguards, as it fools them every time. I won't ask any questions though, as I already know what ALL the answers will be. I've seen the "script" too many times before. Probably just go to get a few more priceless Jainisms for the book. Heck, perhaps someday someone will pick up the rights as a TV soap opera, or more likely for an X-rated horror movie.
Roger
(still "Jolly" after all this pain and financial devastation) |
