Gerald Levin Time-Warner
Levin's failure comes down to one colossal mistake:
In his desperate eagerness to become a new-media CEO, he orchestrated a
megamerger between Time Warner and a vastly overvalued AOL--one of the worst
acquisition deals ever. "He had the largest midlife crisis in the history of
American capitalism," one of our panelists quipped.
THE STAT: The AOL deal destroyed over $200 billion in Time Warner shareholder
value.
Martin Sullivan American International Group
This is the guy who approved those
"retention" bonuses that AIG tried to pay after sucking up nearly $200 billion
from U.S. taxpayers. Sullivan was ousted before the bailout, but his inaction
as CEO helped create AIG's mess. He brushed off the firm's subprime exposure as
"manageable" while writedowns mounted and the firm recorded its two
largest-ever quarterly losses.
THE STAT: Sullivan's severance package was $25.4 million, including $322,000
for private use of corporate aircraft.
John Sculley Apple Corp.
Sculley forced Steve Jobs out of
Apple. Enough said. But let's continue: Though he was a brilliant marketer at
Pepsi, he proved to be disastrous as the top manager of a tech company and
unsophisticated about the technology field. His tenure was marred by infighting
among top managers and expensive projects that flopped in the marketplace.
(Remember the Apple Newton?) Sculley boosted the price of the Macintosh when
personal computer prices were falling. The board ousted him in 1993, when Apple
was slipping toward bankruptcy.
THE STAT: In 1987, Sculley was reported to be the highest-paid executive in
Silicon Valley, earning a then-unheard-of $2.2 million.
Roger Smith General Motors
The CEO's job is often
thankless, and no one was ever thanked less than Roger Smith, General Motors chairman
from 1981 to 1990 and the unwitting stooge of Michael Moore's mockumentary
Roger and Me.
He started his career at the company in 1949 as a green-eyeshade guy, a lowly
accounting clerk. His 1984 reorganization attempted to streamline GM's back-of-the-house
operations but was, in a word, a disaster. It sowed confusion and disorder that
practically idled the automaker for months. Current CEO Rick Wagoner has said,
"We've been 12 to 14 years digging out from that."
Al Dunlap Scott Paper/Sunbeam Corporation
Picked by the board of Scott
Paper Co. as the man to turn the struggling company around, Dunlap earned his
nickname "Chainsaw Al" by slicing 11,000 employees. When Scott merged with
Kimberly-Clark, Dunlap's payoff was estimated at more than $100 million.
Dunlap's memoir/manifesto, Mean Business, roughly coincided with his next CEO
star turn, which was also to be his last. Sunbeam's stock surged on the news
that the Chainsaw was coming; massive workforce reductions and factory closures
followed within months.
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