Jones Apparel CEO Peter Boneparth has
been fired. Bloomberg explains
why:
Jones stock has dropped by almost a third since Boneparth, a former investment
banker, took the helm five years ago. The company in February reported its
first annual loss in at least 17 years and a month later said it wouldn’t
retain Boneparth after his contract expired in 2009…
Jones’s profit has declined or it reported a loss in eight of the past 10
quarters.
That’ll do it. But the chairman of the board, Sidney Kimmel,
doesn’t want to just come out and say that the CEO was underperforming and therefore
unceremoniously ousted. Instead, the company press
release quotes him as he embarks boldly upon a course of classic corporate
doublespeak. The incoming CEO, Wes Card, has demonstrated "a
commitment to utilizing our outstanding design, merchandising and operating
talent to capitalize on opportunities in the marketplace," Kimmel’s quoted
as saying, adding that "Peter and the Board agreed that this was an appropriate
time to transition our leadership."
"Transition," Mr Kimmel, is not a verb. Or if it is, it shouldn’t
be. And in any event, I looked it up in my thesaurus, and it’s not listed as
a synonym for "fire". Next time, could we have a little more in the
way of honesty and a little less in the way of euphemistic and obfuscatory circumlocutions?
You now have a CFO named John McClain. With any luck, he’ll
import John McClane’s
ability to get straight to the point. You clearly need it.