Another $3 million for Martha Stewart…
We’re starting to get bored writing about Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO) as much as we do. Within the past year, we’ve written about founder Martha Stewart’s guaranteed bonus and the $2 million she gets to allow her various homes to be used for production purposes. There was also the overly sunny letter that she penned to investors earlier this year.
Despite this, we just couldn’t ignore Martha’s new employment contract in the 10-Q filed by the company yesterday, which includes a $3 million “retention payment” for the domestic goddess. That’s in addition to a $2 million salary, which according to the proxy the company filed last month, represents a $1.1 million raise. The contract also includes a wide range of other goodies, including “automobiles and drivers seven days a week”, reimbursement for all business, travel and entertainment expenses (which seems like a pretty broad definition), security expenses and even internet and telephone expenses at her various homes.
All of this makes us wonder: where exactly is the company’s board of directors? While the stock has bounced back off its lows, it’s dropped dramatically since 2005. There have also been several rounds of layoffs. Given that, does Martha Stewart really deserve a $3 million bonus just for signing her name not to mention a 122% raise?
Image Source: Pacific Coast News
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Posted in Tags: 10Qs, employment contracts, frequent flyers |
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May 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Retention? Where on earth could Martha Stewart go — jump ship to another company? I assume MSO has some right to the name, so where on earth would she go?
WTF
May 13th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Yes, she deserves that. I would’ve guessed she’d be making more !
Don’t be such Sour Grapes, Footnoted.org.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:46 am
@ Steve: There’s a difference between being a fan of Martha and being an investor in MSO and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any investors who thought that the performance of the company over the past few years is worth any rewards.
But forget the stock price for a minute: how many people do you know that are getting a 122% raise this year? Forget about other media companies, which are particularly in the dumps, but look across the universe of companies. Let me know how many others you find.
And the $3 million “retention bonus”? Where else is Martha going to go? The bottom line is that the MSO board is woefully inept here — and quite frankly has been for awhile — for allowing this sort of thing to continue.
If the company were private, this wouldn’t be an issue. But that’s not the case here.
May 16th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
“where exactly is the company’s board of directors? ”
On the other side of those employment contracts of course….they have been there the whole time.