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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Mike Buckley who wrote (52613)8/31/2002 10:29:33 AM
From: chaz  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 54805
 
OT: My letter to Senate Banking Committee Subcommittee on Finance and Investment


August 31, 2002

Senator Paul S. Sarbanes
Senator Phil Gramm
Senator Christopher J. Dodd
Senator Michael B. Enzie
Senate Committee on Banking: Subcommittee on Securities & Investment

RE: Remarks on the subject of executive incentive compensation

Dear Senators:

I am a retired private citizen-investor who is, like all of you, very interested in resolving abuses in the financial markets and restoring trust. Of particular interest to me is executive incentive compensation that gives options for large numbers of shares to management, setting them up for windfall profits, whether the firm does well or not.

Also, as you know, many companies with such plans do not account for them except in financial statement footnotes, annually only. Many companies have recently begun to change this, and plan in future statements to expense these options, but still annually only. While this is better than nothing, I believe it’s an attempt to solve the wrong problem.

The problem lies not with how options are revealed or expensed. The real problem is that the interests of shareholders and managers are misaligned because of the options. Greed is inbred in these plans. It cannot be avoided. Common shareholders cannot learn of it until much too late to protect themselves. Trust becomes a further casualty.

Senators, there is a way to fix this. Simply ban option plans for all employees and replace them with outright stock grants. Impose a 2 to 3-year vesting period, defer taxes on the grants until sale occurs. Require quarterly reporting of grant amounts. Require 72-hour advance notice of sale of granted stock (by management, not lower level employees). Stock grants are already expensed immediately, so that whole matter just goes away. With this plan, the interests of shareholders and management are perfectly aligned, as least as far as stock price is concerned. Every share goes up (or down) the same amount based on how the company does. Not true if I have shares and management has options. They can gain while I lose. If we both have shares, we gain or lose together.

Thank you for reading this. I hope you’ll find merit in these ideas. I am also sending them to the House Banking Committee, and to the SEC.

Charles E. Durham,



To: Mike Buckley who wrote (52613)8/31/2002 10:01:32 PM
From: Eric L  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 54805
 
re: CDMA Q2 Subscribers posted by CDG

cdg.org

Quarterly CDMA Net Subscriber Adds

Q1 01 Q2 01 Q3 01 Q4 01 Q1 02 Q2 02

9.96m 5.91m 6.87 8.17m 8.87m 6.932m


I think we have a little prepaid scrubbing. Q1 02 should not really have been higher than Q4 01 (but we saw similar in 00/01 so I somewhat suspected it again).

Some quick calculations here:

Message 17940740

Best,

- Eric -



To: Mike Buckley who wrote (52613)9/5/2002 4:16:30 PM
From: Eric L  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 54805
 
re: Siebel competitor salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is a privately-held California corporation (I haven't run across revenues). Strategic and financial investors include:

- Halsey Minor, Founder, CNET
- Larry Ellison, Chairman, Oracle Corporation
- Credit Suisse First Boston
- Ted Waitt, CEO, Gateway, Inc.
- William Hambrecht, Chairman, W.R. Hambrecht & Co.
- Stratton Sclavos, President and CEO, VeriSign
- Patrick McGovern, Chairman, IDG

salesforce.com

>> Salesforce.com Achieves 5,000 Customer Milestone; Fastest Growing Online CRM Company Adds More Customers Than Siebel, Peoplesoft, Oracle And SAP Combined

September 05, 2002

San Francisco
September 5, 2002
Business Wire

Salesforce.com, the market leader in online customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that the company has achieved 5,000 paying customers around the world over a three-year period, making it the fastest-growing CRM company of its kind. The company has 70,000 users in 107 countries accessing the service in multiple currencies and eight languages.

With its unique "software as a service" model, salesforce.com continues to appeal to companies of all sizes, including small, medium, and large enterprises, and from many vertical industries, including technology, manufacturing, media, insurance, financial services, and professional services.

Recent customer wins include The Weather Channel, Kikkoman, Le Meridien Hotels and Ericsson Microelectronics. Salesforce.com announced today that Segway LLC, manufacturer of the first self-balancing electric-powered transporter, has become its 5,000th customer.

In the past year, salesforce.com has added more CRM customers than Siebel, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and SAP combined, and now has more CRM customers than any of these vendors. According to many analysts, enterprise CRM software, such as offerings from Siebel, PeopleSoft, and SAP, fail to meet expectations more than 50 percent of the time, resulting in countless abandoned software implementations. Businesses have started to turn their backs on these solutions. In fact, a recent report from analyst Chuck Phillips of Morgan Stanley notes that Siebel has seen 30% sequential and 41% year-to-year decline in license revenue.

A growing number of companies have left traditional client-server software for salesforce.com's online, pay-as-you-go model in order to see immediate ROI and a lower total cost of ownership. Recent customer wins that exemplify this trend are Arvato Services (formerly Bertelsmann Services), Javelin Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of NYFIX, Inc. and Garrett Aviation, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric Company.

"We needed an online CRM solution that delivered immediate benefit to our sales team without any barriers like high cost, long implementation, or the complex design of traditional CRM products," said Chris Larsen, executive vice president of sales and marketing for DecisionOne. "Salesforce.com delivers an easy-to-use tool that our employees require to be effective, along with the reporting functionality that helps executive management assess and grow our business -- all without requiring any significant, upfront investments in software, hardware or consultants."

"We are 100% focused on making our customers successful," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "That is why, more often than not, companies are choosing salesforce.com over solutions from our competition. Our customers consistently experience a high level of success in a matter of weeks versus months and without the risk of high up-front costs, lengthy implementation cycles and failure rates associated with traditional software."

Since launching in 1999, salesforce.com has gained tremendous international traction by adding customers in every region of the world. Salesforce.com's expanded global functionality includes a unique architecture that allows real-time access from anywhere in the world, multi-language support, and multi-currency capabilities. In addition, salesforce.com has maintained continuous, seamless upgrades to its service in an effort to meet the growing needs of its customers. Significant enhancements over the last few years include customer self-service, closed-loop marketing automation, and advanced integration capabilities. Offline Edition, a revolutionary browser-based solution that allows users to work offline with the same user interface as the online version, was made generally available in the summer of 2002. The comprehensive global online CRM solution provides a 360-degree view of the customer without the high risk, high cost and slow deployment process associated with traditional software systems.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com builds and delivers enterprise applications as scalable online services. The salesforce.com product suite -- Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Offline Edition -- gives companies a complete 360-degree view of the customer. The company's award-winning CRM solutions provide integrated online sales force automation, customer service and support management, and marketing automation applications to help companies meet the complex challenges of global customer communication. Salesforce.com has received considerable recognition in the industry, including two Five-Star ratings from PC Magazine, two Deploy Awards from InfoWorld, Red Herring 100, Upside Hot 100, Investor's Choice Award from Enterprise Outlook, Editor's Choice from TMCLabs, Top 10 CRM Implementation from Aberdeen Group, and InfoWorld's 2001 CRM Technology of the Year. Founded in 1999, salesforce.com is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia. Salesforce.com customers include Autodesk, Dow Jones Newswires, Ericsson Microelectronics, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Kikkoman, Le Meridien Hotels Worldwide, Paymentech, Putnam Lovell NBF, Siemens PT&D, Textron Fastening Systems, USA Today and Wachovia. <<

- Eric -