Is Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy feeling a little overworked at the end of what has, after all, been a particularly difficult year for his company? In the summer of 2002, McNealy took on the role of chief operating officer (COO) following the departure of Ed Zander, and has been talking his way into trouble ever since.
Rather than allow the announcement of his appointment as COO to provoke a vast outpouring of joy on Wall Street, analysts resolutely kept the company on ‘hold’ – which in Wall Street parlance often means ‘sell’ – and now McNealy is hitting back at what he sees as their lack of support.
McNealy’s stance is clear: Analysts? Pah! “They don’t have real jobs,” he told a Vignette customer conference. He has also advised Sun staff and stockholders to adopt the posture of the three wise monkeys, in order that they can ignore the ‘evil’ peddled by Wall Street, and to “go illiterate” by not reading the financial pages.
In that way, at least they may not notice that Sun’s stock price has plunged by 85% in the last year alone. In addition, at least 4,400 of Sun’s employees may be similarly blind to the fact that they are about to be made redundant.
