Ovitz keeps severance package

[LincolnMcGrath]

Delaware judge rules that $140 million in compensation should not be returned to Walt Disney.

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - A judge ruled Tuesday that the Walt Disney Co. board did not breach its duties when ex-President Michael Ovitz took away $140 million in compensation when he was ousted, dealing a blow to shareholder activists seeking to hold boards responsible for their conduct.

Judge William Chandler of Delaware Chancery Court rejected arguments of Disney shareholders who said the media company should not have awarded the severance payout to Ovitz, who left the company in 1996 after 14 months on the job.


http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/09/news/fortune500/disney_ovitz.reut/index.htm?section=cnn_topstories


All I can think to say is.......F*ck me running.

[JHB]

1. Where can I get that job?

A severance of $10mil per month worked?

That's a BMI index of 200 per month!

(BMI is Better than Median Income; the BMI index is any amount of money expressed in terms of units $50,000 (which is better than the median family income for a year). The BMI index is a rough measure of how many families could be supported in a middle-class manner (and not the low end, to boot) for a year by some outrageous sum that only seems to fall into the pockets of corporate officers.)

[LincolnMcGrath]

2. Pensions are getting flushed every day in this country for folks

who actually work for a living. When will the welfare for the rich ever end.

[LincolnMcGrath]

3. Uhh hello? 10 million a month!

:mad:

[Tactical Progressive]

4. Great news. On so many levels.

First and most importantly, I CAN'T WAIT to run my new soundbite on right-wing corporate America, where 'some CEO a few months back worked for 14 months and got a $140 million dollar severance package'. Only in an America run by Republicans. With everybody's job going to India or China, that's the way to do it.

It is a FANTASTIC sound-bite encapsulation of how America is turning. This should be interjected into every conversation. 'Dale Earnhardt junior sure had a good year... Yeah, but he ain't making no $140 million.' 'My friend just got his job sent to India ... Did he get that $140 million severance for 14 months work I heard about?'

I just love this, it is so over the top, while at the same time being so emblematic of what America has become under 25 years of right-wing rule, interrupted only by about two years of Clinton not bound and gagged.

Secondly, who does this hurt? Disney shareholders? Fuck them, they're probably mostly Republicans. And at any rate they are owners of a company that set this kind of thing in place.

And lastly, if Ovitz is a Hollywood liberal, maybe he'll help out in the fight. I like the thought of a liberal making away with the right-wing corporate thug money.