Management finally did something right for a change

[The Goose]

They hedge fuel!!!!

Let's party!!!

Better yet, let's give millions in bonus awards for hedging fuel in today's environment.

Never mind that the stock is below $10 again, give the "idiots" their bonus awards so they don't leave and go to work for someone else.

I got a good laugh from the bolded part of your comment - since when has any executive from an airline gone anywhere else and been a success in their new position?

 

[kirkpatrick]

Bob Crandall worked at TWA for six years before going to AA.

MK

 

[eolesen]

I got a good laugh from the bolded part of your comment - since when has any executive from an airline gone anywhere else and been a success in their new position?

Probably not the fairest of questions, since up until the past ten years or so, most of the people who moved into senior management at airlines were there because they loved the industry. Now, it's just another job at a big company.

But perhaps the real truth is that most executives who leave an airline have saved enough that they don't need to work, and if they do, they go do something they want to do instead of trying to be king of the world.

Jeff Campbell left AMR in 2004 to take on the CFO job at McKesson (#16 company on the Fortune 500 with $88B in revenues). He's still there, so he must be doing his job correctly... I hope so -- his salary tripled, and there's probably a lot less stress being in healthcare than in transportation.

Stephen Wolf, probably one of the more notorious airline CEO's, is non-exec Chairman of R.R. Donnelly, the worlds largest commercial printer and had $11B in revenues last year. And no, it's not the same Donnelly that publishes the Yellow Pages... RRD does books, catalogs, and other print material. Again, probably a lot less volatile and stressful, and Donnelly has been around for over 140 years.

Tom Plaskett went on to be non-exec Chairman of Novell Corporation after the failure of Pan Am, and being fired from Continental before that. Novell is still a fairly known player in Linux, IT security, and systems management.

The best example of someone going on to do what they wanted to is Dick Ferris...

Dick was CEO at United during the 80's, and was essentially fired after the pilots strike. He went on to be exec chairman of Doubletree for a while, and was on the board of the PGA (which had revenues last year of about $875M) for 15 years up until last December, when he finally retired.

 

[Boomer]

Yes, and the amount stated is 24M shares. It's not 9 + 15 + 15 + 24.... It's 9 + 15.

Shares held by a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a holding company have to be reported at all three levels:

TOA's holding is the 9M shares.
TP's holding is the 15M shares.
Since TM owns 100% of TP, they have to report their effective control over the 15M shares held by TP.

Since Gendell has effective control over both TOA and TM (and by default, also over TP), he has to report his control over the 9M shares held by TOA and the 15M shares controlled by TP thru TM.

It's a crazy way of reporting ownership, but that's what transparency and disclosure are all about...

I stand corrected, thanks for the other links and the brief tutorial. The OwnershipAnalyzer.com site is really something.
Regards,
Boomer

 

[FWAAA]

Interesting mention of AA's cash and idiot investment analysts in the McPaper today:

Last week in presentations at the JPMorgan conference, senior Northwest, Continental, US Airways and Delta officials all emphasized what they believe to be their companies' more-than-adequate liquidity in light of triple-digit oil prices.

American Treasurer Beverly Goulet used a bit of humor to jab investors. Last summer and fall, she said, investors and analysts frequently questioned why her airline's parent, AMR, was building such a large cash balance and whether that was the best use of the company's money.

"The joke was that whenever people would look at the $5 billion-plus of cash on our balance sheet and ask (CEO) Gerard Arpey how much cash we really needed, his answer was always, 'More,' " she said. "Now, they're asking whether that's enough."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/t..._N.htm?csp=N008

Looks like assembling and hoarding a large cash balance might have been good management after all . . .