CEO affairs

As the great journalist HL Mencken said, a Puritan is someone afflicted with ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’ Clearly, the guys in tall black hats haunt the board of Boeing: when recently resigned CEO Harry Stonecipher chose to have an affair, he didn’t commandeer a jet for a personal excursion into the Mile-High Club.

Instead, the affair seems to have been conducted with the utmost propriety: Stonecipher’s lover did not report directly to him, the relationship was consensual and had no effect on the conduct of Boeing’s business. In terms of the alleged offense’s effects on others, it’s a bit like sacking the CFO for leaving the toilet seat up.

No-one resigned from Boeing over intensive lobbying for persistently failed anti-missile tests. Heads did not roll when the company whined about unfair competition as Airbus drew ahead with its range of civil aircraft. Stonecipher was not even asked to resign for having a name that comes straight from some Victorian morality tale.

Looking at how some companies promote the scions of their founding fathers with nepotistic disregard for their lack of proven abilities, this particular form of human bonding is surely the least reprehensible of sins.

The truth is that, despite their self-image as gung-ho entrepreneurial risk-takers, modern corporate executives take no risks whatsoever. The stock goes up: collect a bonus. The stock goes down: collect a bonus and recalculate the stock options. The shareholders cotton on: hang in there, and make sure you make as much money for leaving as you would get for staying. And are any of these people likely to be remembered in history? Genuine entrepreneurs who founded industries – the likes of Henry Ford and Bill Gates – may be recalled. But these latest jumped-up clerks? I doubt it.

Perhaps Stonecipher had an inkling of this lack of immortality, and wanted to seed the future. Genghis Khan – almost as greedy as a modern CEO – had this to say of medieval Mongol job satisfaction: ‘The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth… and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.’

Recent genetic studies show Genghis Khan left a stunning 16 mn breeding stock options in the form of direct male descendants. Those Y chromosomes will be rippling through human history long after people have wised up to stock options and the winning ways of contemporary CEOs.

One cannot help but wish there were more Stoneciphers wanting to spread their genetic markers. It is not even necessarily gender-biased anymore: female CEOs can spread their ova into old age, and use their wealth to get surrogate mothers. At least while their mind is on passing on the seed of their loins, they might be kept too busy to work out ways to get their hands on shareholder assets while looking over their shoulders for Eliot Spitzer – who, to his credit, has so far kept his eye on the boardroom rather than the bedroom.

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Andy White, Freelance WordPress Developer London