One regretful aspect of the shareholder proposal is that the merrit of it seems tainted since it was presented by someone associated w/Mergers and Acquisitions, when really, it could have been proposed by another shareholder simply wanting to put forward a proposition toward Sr. management accountability to shareholders. HG once publicly placed shareholder interests behind employee commitment.
Now, I am not saying that's a bad thing at all, but at the time it was stated, and until the defeated vote on more options, the employee commitment was only to the senior management, and not the engineering staff.
Management then, in response to the defeated vote, effectively added great performance-based inititives at the engineering employee level (for instance, for patents granted), but they did not put themselves to a similar performance-based scale. They continued a very generous program that shifted over to RSUs to keep the Sr. Management compensation torch burning brightly.
Since MG was the only CEO that made an attempt to put forth a published business plan, and goals by which senior management had a yardstick whereby their compensation and bonuses could be determined, to me it is now the compensation of Sr. Management alone, that remains as an area to improve accountability.
I will agree with one counter-viewpoint that DannyDetail put forward that, almost as a rule most U.S. companies fall victim of, is to have a corporation measured by short-term, earnings period to period results versus long-term goals and results.
I am not sure how I will vote on the proposal yet. I do hope this post is not considered management bashing. I think that managment got rewarded early for results not yet attained, and therefore water under the bridge will be followed by more water.
I strongly beleive IDCC is on the verge of becoming a very successful company and I'm excited to be holding shares.
For this type of company, I also think that HG makes a good CEO, and while some say he's not a dynamic speaker, he has made some noteworthy quotes, portraying a vision that I still like to hang onto.
