The CEO of Home Depot has been vanquished, but not before he makes off with over $200 million in severance. A weekly occurance it seems now, with pigs stepping down after losing billions in shareholder value, stuffing dinner rolls into their pants on the way out. The story behind Nardelli involves his annual shareholder meetings where he’d have a spray bottle full of his own urine at the ready, setting ground rules that limited owners of the company he was in charge of to a single one minute question in exchange for a few pulls on the spray trigger. One stinky shareholder asked about the conflict of interest pertaining to his compensation and that of the Board of Directors, while Nardelli unscrewed the top of the bottle and doused the malcontent, saying, “this isn’t the appropriate forum for such comments”. The odor was unbearable for most at that point, though an interloper holding a stake in both Home Depot and Lowes had come prepared with a poncho and cotton to stuff up both nostrils, with notecards neatly prepared days prior, up to the podium for what would be a respectfull inquiry regarding lost market share to their rival. Halfway through this question, right after “Lowes” is mentioned, Nardelli puts the bottle up and fills his mouth, leans back, gargles then with a lurch forward blasts all of it bullseye on the face of this man, soaking his hands and notecards. Nardelli wipes his mouth and exits.
Hank McKinnell of Pfizer – William Maguire of UnitedHealthGroup – Stock Prices Own Us (2/8/05) – Read up and get ready for lots of words to come on stock option backdating…if you’re not up on that then skim your newspaper’s business section every day for headlines, as they’ll be in there, most likely multiplying like wet gremlins throughout 2007. Supposed-to-be-impartial corporate boards have been discovered enriching themselves along with the executives in about 25% of the nation’s publicly traded companies with these backdated stock options. Harvard Law School produced the study at the end of last year as I recall.
Al, I freaked when I saw your comment on my political blog..it was welcome, dont’ get me wrong..just used to seeing you on my fluff blog m’dear.
The whole nasty, sordid backdating thing has been getting some airplay for almost a year now. I am glad that some of these guys will get hosed over their greed. I read about Home Depot’s guy..wotta dick..and a rich one at that.
Approrpiate picture for a story I have been hearing about all day. Man, the Home Depot folks were really rode hard and left wet, weren’t they? I don’t know anything about this dude Nardelli.
Dusty – I’m between semesters for two weeks (longest break since I started), so I decided to change my routine up. Once it gets rolling again (tomorrow…ugh), I’ll have a short amount of time for surfing/blogging, but instead of going to Daily Kos and a couple others, I’ll be on your site. I can’t believe it took me that long to figure out you had a political site to go along with the other one! I really like it – and since I read a few bad words you posted, I decided to let it fly in a comment or two.
If I go over the line, just let me know and I’ll tone it down a bit.
I do not hold back w/the swearing and do not expect my commenters to do the same Al..its all part of expressing ourselves..fark those that do not understand! Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate your intelligence and thoughts 🙂
Same here!
Yeah, I smelled this guy coming in, in 1999. I worked at a Home Depot, then, and I just knew all that they were praising the guy about; and that he was giant and all from Westinghouse, right? -seemed to good to be true and would not be good for what was a then vulnerable Depot. Back then, was a time for working at social issues such as deaths in stores, alternative-lifestyles folks and all employee betterments and rights, or to continue in the already great efforts of the community “giving back” vehicle, which they practically coined.
This Bob Nardelli, from the start was focused and giving his best corporate america dollar-squeeze lessons.
It is a shame; that what was once a great company to shop at, to work for, and to own, may never recover from the likes of this scum. He was on the skeptical side; from the start -but not much, seemingly just a little- at the beginning because he made it seem very strategic, and I initially supported the cutting back of openings in the first year and a half. However; what he did to the spread of stores in that first year or so should have red-flagged the board. Do we know what the founders have said about it?