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(copy it from FINANCIAL TIMES May 22nd, 2000)
It has been an anxious few weeks for Joseph Galuszka, chief morale officer of Scient, a US-based e-business consultancy. When your staff all hold stock options, a falling share price is not good for morale. And like many internet-related companies, Scient’s shares fell sharply last month.
Mr Galuszka has been trying to lift his colleagues’ spirits at Scient’s regular rallies, where staff are entertained by disc jockeys, jugglers and magicians, as well as being reassured about the underlying health of the business.
“There’s really nothing we can do to affect stock market conditions,” Mr Galuszka says. “But we can affect what’s happening at Scient. The Scient colleagues know that we have a business plan that is very solid.”
Last month’s market fall has shaken staff in internet-related companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Many joined dotcom businesses from established companies, often accepting pay cuts but receiving potentially lucrative share options in return. Last week’s collapse of Boo.com, the UK-based online sportswear retailer, has raised fears that other failures might follow. Even in those businesses that survive, the share options look far less attractive than formerly they did.
Dotcom company stock market flotations have been postponed, and many employees in listed companies are holding options which are “under water”, with exercise prices higher than current share prices.
“It has left people who have moved very, very nervous,” says Stephen Bampfylde, a London-based headhunter. “In the past five years, share options have been one of the key determinants for anyone moving jobs. Going to the dotcom world, people have been willing to take a 50 per cent salary drop in return for equity.”
Mr Bampfylde says some dotcom staff have been looking to return to large companies. “People have been phoning their old employers and saying: ‘Can I come back?’ ”
Companies are prepared to consider taking back employees in their thirties, hoping to use their experience, Mr Bampfylde says. Those in their twenties are finding it much harder to return. “While they have been away, the universities have produced another generation of 21-to-24-year-olds. Employers are saying: ‘Sorry, you blew it.’ ”
However, Patrick Pittard, the Atlanta-based chief executive of Heidrick & Struggles International, one of the world’s largest headhunting firms, says many managers are still attracted by dotcom companies, believing the internet will dominate tomorrow’s business world.
“There was some market irrationality,” Mr Pittard says. “But I don’t think the market was incorrect in recognising that there is a shift to a digital economy.” However, he says, managers are now looking for jobs at internet-related companies that have serious business plans and the prospect of making a profit. “Just having a good idea is no longer enough,” he says.
And many who joined the internet revolution are still wealthy, even if they are not as rich as they were two months ago. Francis Cueto, who left Disney in 1998 to join StarMedia Network, an internet portal for Latin America, points out that even after the share price fall, many of his friends who joined dotcom companies have no cause to regret their choices.
Among Mr Cueto’s contemporaries at Harvard Business School were some who joined what were then little-known companies such as Yahoo!, the internet portal, and Amazon.com, the online bookseller.
Even many in less celebrated internet-based companies expect their share options eventually to deliver them riches, even if not to the extent once imagined. “If you were going to receive 50,000 options in a pre-IPO company and you were thinking the stock price was going to be $100, that would have been $5m. If it now turns out that the price is going to be $50, that is still $2.5m,” Mr Cueto says.
He adds that Mr Cueto says those who have joined dotcom companies know they need to take a long-term view. “I’m sure there are investment bankers making $400,000 a year who will be more hesitant to jump in [to dotcom companies], but we all know we are at the end of the first innings of a very, very long game.”
Money was not the only reason people opted for internet companies, he says. “There are less tangible benefits. There is the excitement and the collaboration with other people.”
But Mr Pittard says people joining internet-based companies are now insisting that a larger part of their pay packages be in cash. Before the recent share price falls, some managers earning $600,000 a year at large companies accepted base salaries of $250,000 plus share options at dotcom start-ups. Few are prepared to accept such large salary reductions now, he says.
Not that life in large companies is entirely comfortable for those with share options. Shares in many large media and technology companies have also fallen, leaving employees with options under water. Microsoft, the software giant whose shares have plummeted since US antitrust regulators proposed breaking it up, last month moved to calm employees’ anxieties about the value of their share options.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said employees would receive additional stock options, pegged to the lower share price, equal to any they received since last July, when staff received their regular option packages.
Microsoft said it still expected the share price to recover sufficiently to make the old option package worth having, but wanted to give staff something in the meantime. Companies in the US sometimes offer staff the opportunity to surrender share options and replace them with new ones with lower exercise prices. Alan Judes, a partner at remuneration consultants Bacon & Woodrow, says repricing of options is less common in the UK because institutional investors object.
Mr Pittard says investors and stock market analysts in the US often object too, but that does not stop companies from repricing. “If it is between making the analysts happy and retaining your key people, you take a hit on the stock price and retain your people,” he says.
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