[CORRECTION NOTICE: According to Richard Siklos, the '72%' factoid included below, now 'almost 72%,' covers the years "between 1997 and 2003" (Shades of Black, p. 438.) Apologies to any who were misled.]
I've submitted a short review of Wrong Way by Jacquie McNish and Sinclair Stewart to Amazon.com. As a preview, I offer this guess as to the historical significance of the Conrad Black trial: it will be to shareholder rights in America what the 1986 Dominion Stores case was to employee-pension rights in Ontario, Canada. (See item #3 in the opinion-and-analysis-piece list in the bottom half of this entry for a brief explanation.) The factoid that's stuck in many people's minds about this case is the egregious ratio, mentioned in Wrong Way as well as in other write-ups, of top executive compensation to Hollinger International's total net income from 1997 to 2003: almost 72%. (Wrong Way, p. 255) In terms of compensation packages for a company of comparable assets, though, I suspect that the compensation levels enjoyed by Mr. Black, et. al. weren't that far out of line. In this sense, the Conrad Black case is really a dredging of the top-executive mire, if in a spot of it that particularly inflames public sensitivities (or, perhaps, outrage.) It's a safe guess that, if Mr. Black is exculpated, then new corporate-governance laws will swiftly follow, ones that may go sufficiently far as to effectively neuter controlling shareholders. Taking companies private should enter a renascence as a result.
The Amazon review is now live.
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