Wednesday, February 23, 2005

An overture for tortured buzzwords

While looking for advertising for my blogs, I found this brilliant piece of copy on the website of Overture.com under "Partner Solutions".

"Achieve superior monetization for your site with our customized solutions."

Apparently the person who wrote this got paid by the syllable. Guess "Get paid with our customized advertising" didn't sound professional enough. The saddest part is that the word "monetization" isn't even used correctly.

Per m-w.com:

Main Entry: mon·e·tize
Pronunciation: 'mä-n&-"tIz also 'm&-
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -tized; -tiz·ing
Etymology: Latin moneta
1 : to coin into money; also : to establish as legal tender
2 : to purchase (public or private debt) and thereby free for other uses moneys that would have been devoted to debt service
- mon·e·ti·za·tion /"mä-n&-t&-'zA-sh&n also "m&-/ noun

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Screw the $21.4 Million, I want 3 Months of Tech Support.

NPR had an amusing take on the points in bold during their business report this morning. You can hear it here.

Carly Fiorina to get $21.4m severance pay
By Scott Morrison in San Francisco in the Financial Times
Published: February 13 2005 20:09 | Last updated: February 13 2005 20:09


Carly Fiorina will be paid a $21.4m severance package after being fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard last week. She will also be able to keep her computer and receive free tech support for three months.
The controversial Ms Fiorina, considered one of the most powerful women in corporate America until her departure, will get $14m of her severance in cash, equal to 2.5 times her compensation last year, and receive another $7.38m in performance related bonuses.

Ms Fiorina was asked to resign after the computer and printer maker's shares fell 50 per cent and her $19bn acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002 failed to generate promised profits.

The terms of the severance agreement, which were detailed in a regulatory filing late on Friday, include the vesting of her 6.07m Hewlett-Packard share options. The average exercise price of those options is $35.73 per share, well above HP's closing price of $21.30 on Friday. She has one year to exercise the options.

The company also provided her with a number of other severance related benefits, including $50,000 for financial counselling, legal and outplacement services. She will also receive administrative support for a six-month period, maintenance of home security for a one-year period and an undisclosed cash payment for the balance of her unused vacation time.

She received $1.4m in salary, a $1.57m bonus and options in the fiscal year to October 31 2004, down from her total compensation of $6.64m the year before.

Even after jumping almost 7 per cent on the day of her departure, HP shares have fallen more than 9 per cent in the past year. The group trades at a significant discount to its rivals due to concern about the company's ability to execute its strategy profitably.

Ms Fiorina, who was hired in 1999 to shake up the “gray old lady of Silicon Valley”, dropped a bombshell in late 2001 when she announced her intention to buy Compaq, the struggling PC maker. That touched off a high-profile proxy battle with Walter Hewlett, then board member and son of co-founder William Hewlett, who said the deal would dilute the value of HP's printing business.

She won over investors by a narrow margin and earned the grudging respect of doubters by integrating the two companies ahead of schedule. But the acquisition failed to boost earnings and HP gave up its lead in the PC market to Dell. HP's corporate computing division has also struggled in the wake of the merger.

Her business career began at AT&T, where she rose to be a vice-president by the early 1990s, impressing with her intelligence, professionalism and style. She made her name when AT&T took the decision to spin off its telephone equipment business in 1995, now known as Lucent Technologies.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

One way to keep a Wal Mart out of your neighborhood

This wonderful story from Canada, courtesy of USA Today and the AP:

Union Plans to Sue Wal-Mart Canada

TORONTO, Feb 11, 2005 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A union Friday said it will file charges against Wal-Mart Canada for exhibiting "bad faith" during its first-ever contract talks by secretly planning to close the affected store.

Earlier this week the Canadian unit of retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will close the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in May.

In October, a few months after the store received automatic union certification by the Quebec Labour Relations Board, the company revealed the store wasn't making money.

The company said union demands wouldn't allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably, compounding its already "fragile" economic state.

At a press conference Friday, Michael Fraser, the Canadian director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, questioned whether Wal-Mart ever had any intention of reaching a collective agreement with the union.

"Wal-Mart made its decision to close the store months before we sat down at the table with them. They made a decision the day the labour board certified the union. Everything since then has been a charade," he told reporters.

The union, which is also skeptical about the company's characterization of the store's economic condition, will be filing unfair labor practice charges. The union plans to ask the province's labor board to force Wal-Mart to prove the store wasn't profitable.

Fraser said it's "quite a coincidence" that the first Wal-Mart store to be unionized in Quebec is also losing money. He said the store's closure is really meant to send a message to Wal-Mart employees in Quebec and across Canada.

Wal-Mart Canada spokesman Andrew Pelletier said the company would provide the store's financial data if requested by the labor board. He noted the union could have seen the income statement for itself, as company negotiators brought it to bargaining meetings.

Pelletier also dismissed allegations that the company bargained in bad faith. In fact, he said the conciliator acknowledged that Wal-Mart Canada bargained in good faith, and he expects the conciliator's report to say so when it's released in the coming weeks.

"We're not the ones that walked away from the bargaining table," Pelletier said, adding that the company initiated the bargaining process and asked for a conciliator. However, in applying for binding arbitration, he said the union was effectively telling the company it wasn't prepared to budge from its monetary demands, which on top of a struggling store made the situation "untenable."

Fraser said the union was not calling for a boycott of Wal-Mart stores as it's engaged in organizing other locations across the country.


It would be interesting to see how many stores Wal-Mart has closed because they are unprofitable anywhere. I'm guessing the number is few or none. There have been other stories of Wal-Mart taking drastic action to quell unionization in the past, including switching to prepackaged raw meat instead of meat cut inside the store to keep its meat department from unionizing.

So, the message is clear to all the communities across the country that don't like the affect that Wal Mart has or will have in their community. Just help organize a union in your local Wal-Mart, and they'll be gone in a hurry.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Fired and forced to live on 21.1 Million

Poor Carly Fiorina. The now ousted CEO of HP will have to walk the streets knocking door to door with her resume hoping to find work, forced to live day to day on a measily severance of 21.1 million.

Perhaps she can look to the buddies that have gone before her, the thousands of people laid off since she took over the company. Maybe they can help her find another CEO position where she can do her best to bring a company down.

Carly was yet another in a long list of CEOs more concerned with their own well being and public stature than in understanding and improving the companies they work for. Carly's completely misguided merger of HP with Compaq created, like most mergers, was less than the sum of its parts. How she thought it was a good idea to merge HP with a company whose biggest asset was one that they already held (namely, a PC business on a downward slide) is a mystery to many.

What kills me is that the price of failure is a 21.1 million windfall that she'll enjoy until some other company picks her up and allows her to lead them down the path of nothingness.