Posted on 03/15/2007 5:17:14 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
March 15, 2007 -- Even steep losses at The New York Times didn't stop its family owners from enriching themselves and insiders with bonuses for making "profits" when there were none.
Although its board acknowledged in filings yesterday that the media company lost $3.76 per share in 2006, directors revised its bottom-line bonus formula to exclude embarrassing write-downs, converting millions in losses into instant profits of $1.58 per share.
[snip] However, citing the tough year ahead for the Times, Sulzberger turned it down and instead took just a $560,521 cash bonus - the same amount of his cash bonus from 2005. He diverted another $2 million of his pending perks to a bonus pool for lower ranking employees who don't get bonuses.....
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Oh the humanity!! Use a bogus bonus formula and a locked in family control to trim company funds to their benefit. I hope they go broke.
I second it.
...These people are clearly delusional.
"..A couple of weeks ago the Ochs-Sulzberger family pulled the majority of its assets (around $640 million) from Morgan Stanley, which had been the custodian of the family fortune for many years. The caption under a picture of Arthur ("Pinch") Sulzberger on the FORTUNE website read, "Angered by a money manager's challenge, Times chairman Sulzberger, Jr will no longer do business with Morgan Stanley." I understand how Pinch could get pissed and defensive at Hassan Elmasry, a Morgan Stanly managing director who runs Morgan Stanley's American and Global Franchise Strategies Portfolio. The fund has $11.5 billion in investments and owns about 7.6 percent of the NY Times Company stock.
Elmasry has been urging a shareholder revolt against Pinch and the Ochs-Sulzberger family ownership of about 19 percent of the NY Times Company stock but all of the Class B voting shares, which allows the family to control nine of 13 board seats.
The company's stock is off 40 percent in the last two years and Elmasry thinks it's probably Pinch's fault. After all, he's the Times' CEO who is elected by the family-controlled board of directors. .."
It is outrageous that the stock of the NY Times is permitted to be publicly traded while the Ochs-Sulzberger family own a special class of stock that allows them control
Imagine the reaction of the Liberal Media if the Bush family had done anything like this...they'd want every one of them in irons.
Sure, it would be a different standard.
Maybe Pinch gets paid by the error.
What they tricked up in this instance is the bonus formula, which stinks, but is legal. What is really rotten is that a publicly traded stock is controlled by the class b voting stock of the Ochs-Sulzberger family.
Good Job Pinch!
I could run it into the ground faster, but that would just be more efficient.
Keep up the good work!
I wonder if he knows he is a dork.
The amount of money the Times had lost over the last few years is mind-boggling. You literally could set Pinch up for a year with a stack of millions, a shovel, and a furnace, and he physically couldn't destroy as much wealth as he has by simply refusing to balance his stubborn left-wing idiocy.
Goes for all his Manhattan media buddies.
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