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Archive for the 'My big fat deal' Category

What does $425K a month buy IDT?

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Motti Lichtenstein, CEO of the IDT Telecom subsidiary of IDT Corporation (IDT), departed on April 1 “to pursue other business opportunities” (press release here). If I were Mr. Lichtenstein, I’d be in no rush to find those opportunities, given the nice post-separation deal he and IDT have cooked up. (IDT has been a bit [...]

Complexities at Callaway Golf…

Monday, April 7th, 2008

We seem to be honoring the sport of golf today at footnoted, although that’s not particularly unusual around here.
In its proxy filed Friday, Callaway Golf (ELY) explained that the “complexity and competitiveness” of its business necessitates paying “above median compensation” so it can attract executives with sufficient smarts. (Yes, theirs is a complex business. Take [...]

Meet Marvel’s newest superheroes…

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Forget about Spiderman and Wolverine. Sure, they’re really cool and have special powers, but not quite as many as Marvel Entertainment’s (MVL) board of directors. A quick skim of the proxy filed late yesterday shows that Marvel’s board has some super-sized salaries. Three directors made over $300K last year and one — Chairman Morton Handel [...]

Nice perks plus silly severance at General Dynamics…

Monday, March 24th, 2008

In its proxy filed Friday, General Dynamics (GD) assures us its executive perks are reasonable because they “benchmark” them against “generally accepted corporate practices.” But as Footnoted readers know, generally accepted corporate perk practices might be described as “anything goes.” Applying GD’s logic, I may start “benchmarking” my own behavior against whatever Britney Spears is [...]

Blackstone and the NYPL’s $100 million gift…

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Blackstone (BX) filed its first 10-K yesterday morning and given its year-end results, not to mention its sagging stock price, it’s not surprising that the company spent 27 pages highlighting potential risk factors. Among our favorites is the one where Blackstone warns about the difficulty of sustaining growth as a public company:
These requirements may place [...]