[Fwd: Kudos and questions]

[Paul Prescod]

Jeff Bone wrote:
> 
>.... 
> Those people *AGREED* to this in order
> to continue receiving his services, which they perceived as having a
> more-than-compensatory effect on continuing share value growth.  It's a
> consensual matter.  There's no room for discussion of "right and wrong,"
> "appropriate and inappropriate," etc.

My interpretation of Tom's complaint is that Michael Dell tried to put
something over on his shareholders. He figured that some would notice
that he had sold some shares and some would notice that he'd been
granted options, but most wouldn't notice both. Dell succeeded in
transferring risk from himself to the other shareholders. Insofar as
risk is hard to quantify, most shareholders would not notice or
understand what he had done.

You seem to believe Thomas that once everyone understood what Dell was
up to, he couldn't "get away with it" anymore:

> > After my
> > piece and several other puiblic criticism of his option pacages in those
> > years wer published, Dell stgarted behaving much more sensibly with regard to
> > his compensation.
> 
> There's that market effect at work.  Neat, huh?

So the question comes down to whether Dell knowingly engaged in
practices that he suspected most people wouldn't understand, of if it
just "turns out" that they didn't understand it and when everyone
understood it he realized that it wasn't a good plan anymore.

Note that the shareholders have three different relationships with Dell:
they are his partners, they are his employers and as a board member he
has a responsibility to look out for their interests. You may believe
that parties to a contract have NO responsibility to each other, other
than to stick to the letter of the contract but most people find it
distasteful to do business with people trying to put something over on
you. When the person trying to trick you is merely a used car salesman,
it is annoying but at least you know to expect that. When the person
trying to trick you is a *business partner* it is arguably unethical.

 Paul Prescod