You chased away all your investors with dividend cuts; then blew through a solid gold balance sheet in only two years. What now?
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Exxon and Apple has solid cash reserve in the bank in addition to time tested savvy management.
Companies that rely less on other people's money usually have their executives free from shareholders influence and they make the best decisions in term of building the company. They also care more for the welfare of the employees. Unfortunately most big companies are public.
I wonder how companies like ExxonMobil and Apple managed the interface between the shareholders, the long range planning to increase the the portfolio and employee satisfaction and retention.
1aom- Lance has toyed with the dividend which is the shareholders salary. Salary or benefit raise for Him is questionable. The deal with shareholders is that you either increase or leave the dividend as is to guarantee your benefit increase which Lance initially tried to do. Most shareholders do not care about your long range plan, business expansion plan or plan to increase reserves or even employees as far as the dividend is intact. This is why you see companies selling juicy assets to increase cash flow to pay dividends during recession.
I also believe it does not all lie with RL. He can only make decisions based on the information given to him. If he is being fed bad information that has been given to him by high level managers then he will make bad decisions. Too many managers do not want to give bad news which may take them off the fast track to higher positions. Too many yes men without enough technical knowledge to be able to tell the difference between BS and good work.
In my opinion, the root cause of the problem lies with not only RL but with the board of directors. Even though the company was not an integrated O&G company any more, they continued to operate and spend funds like it was integrated. Instead of protecting the company from lower prices and saving for a rainy day, lavish sums of money were spent on the most maniacal concepts. I believe that they have changed course now but it's too late.
Anyone taking bets on whether RL gets a salary bump for 2016 because of the great job he did?
1cvb - I agree with you that the results of the poor decisions would eventually catch up with the company. However, the individuals that made the poor decisions may have pocketed the millions and thousands of dollars and left the company - enjoying the millions, vacationing in Hawai or somewhere else. This is part of the reason why the world sometimes is not fair. Makers of poor decisions and who allow others to suffer are not punished immediately. Other seemingly innocent people now suffer the consequences of the poor decisions. You see examples of this trend of poor management in COP and the eventual consequence at Encana, Talisman etc. CNRL presently has very good management.
"You know what I always say. The good players play."
-RL, aka Head Mammajamma back in Alaska.
Don't worry. We all took notes. No worries about layoffs up here!
“You cannot allow any of your people to avoid the brutal facts. If they start living in a dream world, it’s going to be bad.”
General James "Mad Dog" Mattis
1bjf, please illustrate for us all what part of my response was factually incorrect. Yes, the ",or they don't care" was analysis, but I challenge you to come to a reasonable alternate conclusion.
Facts matter. Sooner or later, poor decisions and the obfuscation of the results of those decisions will financially catch up to the individual and company alike.
If lies keep you working instead of sense of pride in your product, go join a cult.
I'm glad the COST team did such a great job last time!!!!!!
Yeah, ok, dude! Didn't realize that Ryan Lance contributed to this site, LOL
The lies are necessary lies to keep the low workers morale manageable before the actual layoff announcement so the COP's dedicated workers keeps working hard for the company and are not unnecessarily distracted. By the way, it is not called lies, it is called management strategy for managing conflict. You should all mind your language on this site.
"There are no broad based staff reductions planned at this time." has been the ELT mantra for how long? They even claimed that when we all knew that they were running the economics on percentage based staff reductions. Then, RL recently stated in the AK town hall that they've always been clear that there would be yet another round of staff reductions.
3-ogt, they might actually believe their own lies, or they know that we know that they're lying and they don't care.
Bahamas.... $21M in the pocket.... fat belly getting tanned.... bald head protected with a P66 cap..... Frozen Margarita..... Hummm....
Ryan did not kill the balance sheet the investor downgrade of reserves did.
For a man to say "not just no, but hell no" and then do the opposite soon after...well, this is a man who does not believe his word is his bond. Who would trust his words in the future?