Survey links CEO approval to stock performance


Digg It Del.icio.us Reddit My Web

Glassdoor.com uses an online questionnaire so employees can rate their companies and CEOs. I took the questionnaire. It’s all the usual stuff, like what do you think of the leadership abilities and competence of senior management, would you recommend your company as a place to work, that sort of thing.

I thought it would be interesting to track the stock performance of the public companies with CEOs that had the highest approval ratings versus those with the lowest approval ratings.

Guess what I found?

Over the past five years, shares of all the companies whose CEOs had the highest approval ratings were in the black, while shares of all the companies whose CEOs had the lowest approval ratings were either in the red or flat. We’re talking 8 of 8 in the black, 8 of 8 in the red or flat.

What does that tell you?

First, that we live in America, the great land of greed and capitalism. If you’re stock is in the money, the CEO’s a god. If your options are under water, he’s a dog. And don’t flame me, it’s what employees had to say, not me. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Second, nobody really needs this website. It’s just for employees to vent about things they have no control over because, thankfully, companies are not democracies and boards don’t care one bit what employees think of their CEOs.

Don’t be so surprised. I’m not even sure boards pay attention to shareholder approval ratings. If they did, Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock would have been out on their cabooses the day after Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting.

Just so you know, this isn’t the data I expected to find. I honestly thought I’d find some surprises in the survey results. But nope, it was all pretty much black and white. I guess that was the surprise.

See Also:

[Via CNET - News.com]

Leave a Reply