Rambus (RMBS)

[Skeptic]

It's that time again - it's time for the Tate Tally - my weekly rant about the selfishness and avarice of Rambus' COB and former CEO.
Treowth was kind enough to remind me that Tate's exercise spree continues and that was enough to stoke the fires of animosity and outrage at the unfairness of the self-dealing occurring at the top spot over at our favorite IP company. Before I lambaste Geoff, it should be noted that the BOD is responsible for this travesty and ultimately it is the complacent shareholders who are now reaping (or not reaping in this case) what they have sown.
That said, I don't know how Tate can sleep at night (I assume he sleeps quite well) knowing that he has been awarded exorbitant sums for a job not well done. The latest Tate Tally shows that over the past 5 years, Geoffrey Tate and Geoffrey Ross Tate (I'm assuming they're one and the same) have exercised 2,234,700 options for total gross proceeds of $53,362,635. Now of course, I don't know what the grant prices were on these, but my guess is that most of this is pure profit. The only one other than Tate smiling about this would be the other board members he paid off (conjecture by me) and Uncle Sam of course who's collected a large fortune in taxes (unless of course Geoff is guilty of tax evasion).
So, Mr. Tate has raked in over $10,000,000 a year for the last 5 years in options alone. He also gets paid a VERY generous salary and probably gets a bonus for his superb performance. We now know Mr. Tate has done well for himself over the last 5 years - how about the sucker shareholders during that time. A quick look at a 5 year chart for Rambus shows that the stock has gone from a split adjusted 80 a share to barely double digits today. The shares have lost 86% of their value during this period. Where is the justice - why is this fair? To rub salt into the wound, this boob still has over 5.3 million options available to be exercised.

I'm still waiting for some crumbs here and I will probably continue to b*tch and moan in the meantime.