Category Archives: defenestrations

PR Lie of the Day

A Sprint spokeswoman declined to comment. She said Mr. Forsee was traveling and couldn’t be reached. One might say that if the CEO of communications giant Sprint Nextel can’t be reached when he travels, that’s reason right there to oust … Continue reading

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Why Did BP’s Browne Resign?

In the September issue of Portfolio, Mimi Swartz has the definitive
account
of l’affaire John Browne.
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Why CEOs Don’t Resign

Let me try to answer Matt Cooper’s question:
How come Warren Spector has been fired from Bear Stearns, but
Jimmy Cayne is still there?
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Shari It Didn’t Work Out

It’s not easy, being the daughter of a media mogul and working for your dad.
Elisabeth Murdoch left News Corp to start her own company,
Shine. Today we learn
that Shari Redstone is leaving Viacom.
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John Mackey Still Hasn’t Resigned

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wants
me to forgive him
. (I shop at Whole Foods on the Bowery – great sausage
selection – so I count as a "stakeholder" in the company.) Well,
I don’t forgive him. Not at all.
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Corrupt Finance Minister Watch: Miceli Goes, Patino Stays

If you had to guess, a few weeks ago, which Latin finance minister would be
forced to resign in the wake of a corruption scandal, your answer would be very
easy: Ricardo Patiño of Ecuador, who was censured by
his own congress on Friday for insider dealing in his own country’s debt –
a deal which reportedly
netted investors more than $150 million, while Ecuador itself made a healthy
$50 million.
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Mackey Should Resign, Regardless of What the Law Says

If Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher can be fired
after having a legal, consensual affair with a co-worker, then it beggars belief
that Mackey, whose behavior was much more damaging to his company, should retain
his corner office.
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Adventures in Corporate Doublespeak, Jones Apparel Edition

Jones Apparel CEO Peter Boneparth has
been fired
. Bloomberg explains
why
:
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Wuffli Out at UBS

The UBS press
release
announcing "senior executive management changes" (aka
the firing of CEO Peter Wuffli) is a classic of the raises-more-questions-than-it-answers
genre.
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Diary of a Defenestration

June 27: "Bear
Stearns’ Asset Management Chief Takes Charge in Fund Crisis
"
is the headline as Rich Marin rides to the rescue of his company’s
embattled hedge funds.
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Yahoo: Terry Out, Jerry In, No Real Change

If it’s fast, new and vibrant you want, I really don’t think that Yang’s your man.
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Bill Downe Still Hasn’t Resigned at Bank of Montreal

A major bank like BMO has no business using a tiny Valhalla-based brokerage to do substantially all of its energy trading.
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Wolfowitz Finally Wakes up to Reality, Resigns

Talk about a lame duck. Paul Wolfowitz will resign
as president of the World Bank on June 30, a month and a half from now, during
which time he will earn $50,000, tax-free, and do substantively zero useful
work. Then again, it’s not a lot of time to find a replacement. Ngozi,
of course, has an easily-leavable job at the Brookings Institute, and she’s
in Washington already. It would be silly to look at anyone else, if you ask
me.
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Goldman Sachs and Lord Browne

Goldman is deservedly drawing some heat for its cowardly decision to fire Lord Browne.
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Paulson hangs Wolfowitz out to dry

Hank Paulson isn’t
going to summit
with G8 bigwigs. Kimmitt will go, and probably not say much.
But – and this is important – Paul Wolfowitz will
turn up. What can it all signify? I think Paulson may look at his no-show as
tantamount to hanging Wolfowitz out to dry.
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Wolfowitz: Deals No Longer On The Table

The Europeans are incredibly reluctant to force a board vote on Wolfowitz. They don’t want to anagonize their allies, the Americans, and they don’t want to damage the Bank more than it has been damaged already. But the intransigence being shown by both Wolfowitz and the Bush administration is forcing their hand.
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JetBlue Ouster: Look at the Shares, Not the Storms

The main job of a CEO is to get the share price rising, and Neeleman managed
that only during 2003. Ever since then, the stock has been either falling or
moving sideways, and that’s more than sufficient reason for the board to replace
him with someone else.
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Lord Browne Resigns From Goldman Sachs Board

Lord Browne has now resigned
from the board of Goldman Sachs
. I can’t believe he did so willingly,
either – Goldman seems to be hanging him out to dry.
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US Steps Up Wolfowitz Support

Wolfowitz is sure to go one way or another, so at this point the interests of the US are in making his departure as painless as possible, and maximizing US control over the choice of his successor. Unfortunately, the US seems to be acting in direct opposition to both of those interests right now.
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One Question for Paul Wolfowitz

Why on earth haven’t you resigned already?
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Wolfowitz’s Ouster: The End of the Bretton Woods Carve-Up?

This could be the single biggest silver lining to the disastrous Wolfowitz presidency: the end of the outmoded convention that the president of the World Bank is always an American and the managing director of the IMF is always a European.
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The Necessity of the Closet

Why it’s overly simplistic to say that Lord Browne should never have been in the closet in the first place.
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Lord Browne: Victim of Homophobic Persecution

Browne is very much the victim here. The Daily Mail, which paid over $100,000 to Chevalier for his kiss-and-tell story, is the homophobic persecutor, using the flimsiest of excuses to out the former BP chief.
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The Tragedy of John Browne

Lord Browne was brought down at the intersection of two explosively dangerous institutions: the closet, on the one hand, and the UK legal system, on the other.
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How Not to Keep Your Job

On Charlie Wilson, Randall Tobias, Alan Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz.
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