Silver Case

A private equity firm calling itself ‘Cerberus’ (vaguely insinuiating it has a brain) committed ritual seppuku today.

What did they do?  Their  first mistake was buying an American car company, Chrysler.  But by far their worst mistake, guaranteed to be a mortal one, was hiring Robert L. ‘Bob’ Nardelli as the chief executive.

This guy is so laughably appalling it stuns me that he’d ever work again.  I guess I’m stunned that he’d work again not just because he’s so utterly incompetent, but because he was paid $245 million for overseeing Home Depot lose %12 of its value over five years as its closest competitor, Lowes, increased by %178.

If you still doubt what an awful executive he is, read this delightful story from the New York Times from a few years ago after Nardelli ‘hosted’ an infamous shareholder’s meeting for Home Depot. It’s so bad it’s almost funny, except it isn’t.  In fact it’s nauseating.  [If you follow one URL in this article today, make it this NYT article]

I was told that Daimler wanted rid of Chrysler so badly that they essentially paid Cerebrus to take it. But I still don’t understand the point of hiring such a worthless piece of crap to oversee the company.  This guy is a proven loser.  So what he works under a ‘pay for performance’ package…I can’t believe  someone more competent wouldn’t have worked under the same arrangement.

Whatever.  Idiots.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.