More on the "Worst CEO of 2005"
On Thursday GamePolitics reported that MarketWatch columnist Herb Greenberg had named Take-Two Interactive's Paul Eibeler as the year's worst CEO.
A little more information has surfaced on Eibler's performance in the past few days. First, a GP reader who happens to also be a Take-Two stockholder (...and I'm very sorry for your loss) wrote in to complain that columnist Greenberg is "a long-time basher of Take-Two and a person known to be associated with a hedge fund manager (David Rocker) of Rocker Partners. Rocker Partners have always sold the Take-Two stock short. There's an entire history of Herb Greenberg writing bad articles about Take-Two when he was with The Street.com where Rocker is a major shareholder. Take-Two has the largest percentage of its stock sold short among all other major publishers."
The reader advised us to google Herb Greenberg and Take-Two, and we did. 'tis true, Greenberg has written quite a bit about Take-Two, mostly in the negative. But none of Greenberg's criticisms seem beyond the pale to GP. The company has had issues that extend well beyond criticisms of violent content in the controversial Grand Theft Auto series - a damning SEC investigation and a revolving door of CEO's being just two of the more noteworthy points.
GP has heard of Rocker's short-selling before. We're not seeing the relevance to Eibeler's "award" in MarketWatch. And if the Rocker Group was short-selling in May-June, they made a bundle. Take-Two (TTWO) was selling at 27.07 just before the ESRB made its Hot Coffee announcement in July. Yesterday's close was 19.19, down nearly eight points, or 29% of its equity value.
GP also heard on Friday from analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush-Morgan. Pachter tracks the video game sector, and we previously interviewed him in July concerning the financial fallout of the Hot Coffee scandal for Take-Two. Pachter was supportive of Eibeler.
"I'm disappointed that Paul was named worst CEO. His company is performing poorly, but he's been CEO for a year, and asking him to reverse the culture immediately is like trying to turn an oil tanker on a dime. (I have) no clue if he's in jeopardy, he should be given a chance to do his job, and should be evaluated on the results delivered. The company needs more stability. Its stock is down because they've missed numbers a couple of times. It's down in part because the rise (in stock price) was overdone. Look at Activision, they're down 20% over the last month."
FINALLY - does Paul Eibeler even really exist? Google this guy for images. There's one - count 'em - one. How can that be?