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Non-Tech : Cendant Corporation (NYSE:CD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J Bertrand who wrote (3000)	2/4/1999 2:36:00 PM
From: Benkea	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3627

Jeff: What a breath of fresh air it is to have a conversation with another person on the internet with a different opinion where in we agree respectfully to disagree. That is how it SHOULD be. I do want to address this: "He is completely aligned with the shareholders IMHO." I was fairly certain he was "aligned" via huge stock options BEFORE they were repriced. If the stock went up, so did the options. He is not aligned with us in any shape, fashion, or form. When the stock tanked, his options were repriced. When the stock tanked, I recorded the loss against gains in 1998 because I didn't get repriced. As far as I know, no shareholders had their loss ELIMINATED like Henry, much less reduced. Food for thought. Here is an excerp from the "Owner's manual" for Berkshire Hathaway wherein Warren Buffett, the CEO, illustrates my definition of "alignment with shareholders": 2.In line with Berkshire's owner-orientation, most of our directors have a major portion of their net worth invested in the company. We eat our own cooking. Charlie's family has 90% or more of its net worth in Berkshire shares; my wife, Susie, and I have more than 99%. In addition, many of my relatives - my sisters and cousins, for example - keep a huge portion of their net worth in Berkshire stock. Charlie and I cannot promise you results. But we can guarantee that your financial fortunes will move in lockstep with ours for whatever period of time you elect to be our partner. We have no interest in large salaries or options or other means of gaining an "edge" over you. We want to make money only when our partners do and in exactly the same proportion. Moreover, when I do something dumb, I want you to be able to derive some solace from the fact that my financial suffering is proportional to yours." More specifically, notice those two sentences: "We have no interest in large salaries or options or other means of gaining an "edge" over you. We want to make money only when our partners do and in exactly the same proportion." NOW THAT is alignment with shareholders. This from a guy who runs a company 5 times the size of Cendant while taking the same $100k annual salary he has for 30 years. Compare that salary to Henry's. Also, BRK's directors, who unlike CD's, act in the best interest of the shareholders with whom they owe a fudiciary responsibilty, only receive NINE HUNDRED dollars annually! I guess that eliminates the incentive to shower the CEO with options and then reprice them.