[Fwd: Kudos and questions]

[Jeff Bone]

Let's put this in perspective.  Tom's claim is that Dell's comp practices "screwed the
little guy."  If the little guy had put $1 or less into Dell stock 10 years ago, today
that $1 would be worth around $100.  Dell's split-adjusted stock price on 2 Nov 1991 was
$0.2448;  today it's currently $24.95;  it went as high as $53 or so in Q1/Q2 of 2000.
Today that gives it something like a 10,000% ROI (or more precisely price growth) ---
which of course pales in comparison to my favorite whipping horse, CMGI at its peak ;-)
--- but not too shabby nonetheless.

At significant points during this time, Dell engaged in his "dastardly" raiding of the
cookie jar, according to Tom's view.  But I call this a win-win:  the shareholders, even
the little guys, got a ride on one of the 5 top performing stocks of the 90s and
experienced --- even after the downturn --- a net 100x increase in value over a decade,
which is almost completely unheard of.  And Dell got the comp he wanted, too.

How can there be anything at all wrong with that?

jb