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Technology Stocks : Network Associates (NET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Y-fall who wrote (5339)	5/29/1999 11:08:00 AM
From: P.M.Freedman	Respond to of 6021

cnnfn.com

To: Y-fall who wrote (5339)	5/30/1999 2:46:00 PM
From: jelrod3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6021

Just got finished perusing the NETA proxy statement for the upcoming annual meeting. I was amazed at how much money Bill Larson pulled down last year. From the exercise of stock options alone, Larson put $19,933,432.73 in his pocket. On top of this, he was paid a salary of $419,962. And the compensation committee (consisting of 2 directors, Virginia Gemmell and Edwin Harper)had the gall to give Larson a BONUS of $453,775! But don't stop there! Larson was given options to purchase 300,000 shares at $31.33 (yes, this is an incentive for him and the company to get the price of NETA shares up....wonder if we will see this level any time soon?). And if this was not enough, he got paid $42,500 for being a Director and attending meetings he was supposed to attend anyway. The thing that really smells bad, however, is the self-dealing that has occurred in connection with the business enterprise that Larson owns 35.2% of known as DirectWeb, Inc. This little company is using NETA like a bank! NETA bought $8.5 million in private placement preferred stock issued by DirectWeb. Now, it seems to me that this should be chump change for a guy like Larson, who, in a single year, pulled in more than $20 million from NETA alone. And surely someone will eventually ask ol' Bill how he can possibly be devoting his full efforts to NETA (which is presumably what NETA hired him for and is paying him for) when he is no doubt distracted by this other little enterprise (which is being bankrolled in part by NETA). And, oh yeah, don't forget that Ginny Gemmell (the compensation committee gal and NETA Director) just happens to be providing compensation services to DirectWeb at the rate of $2500 per month with an option to purchase 30,000 shares of DirectWeb common stock. Ginny is up for re-election as a NETA Director this year, along with Edwin Harper. Is this not a great country or what!! What is great about it is that NETA has had to cough up all this info in their proxy. Now us shareholders can ask whether or not we want this crowd watching the store. I know what my vote is.