Tad Smith was born to run the famed art auction house, Sotheby’s. He graduated from Princeton, earned his MBA from Harvard (where else, duh?) and then took up a career at Cablevision (that’s not a typo).
After installing cable boxes into the homes of people in the south of Bronx, Tad became CEO of MSG and then transferred all of those skills he learned in the cable world to become Master and Commander, Dictator, of Sotheby’s.
Since his reign of terror began at BID, the stock has suffered. The stock is down a staggering 41% under his rule. This, of course, means that Tad’s compensation must’ve fallen in line, yes? After all, he isn’t running an investment bank.
Tad Smith, Cable Buy, CEO of Sotheby’s
WRONG.
Tad took home over $20 million last year, most of which came from stock compensation
Smith, who started on March 31, 2015, received a salary of $1.06 million, a sign-on bonus of $1.1 million and a stock award valued at $16.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. He also accepted a $1.4 million stock award in place of an annual cash bonus.
If you recall, Dan Loeb was trying to increase shareholder value in BID at the same time Tad took over. Furiously, he rejected the know-nothing Dan, cast him aside like a post modernism ashtray, and then proceeded to entrench himself amidst all of the art and champagne and decadence.
Smith has replaced key executives, offered staff buyouts and scrapped the dividend to buy back shares. Sotheby’s fell 39 percent in his first nine months as CEO and had the worst annual stock performance last year since 2008.
So he bought back the common stock while slashing the dividend, eh? How’d that work out?
At the same time, the global art world suffered, due to Chinese disinterest. Sales for fine art fell by 7% to $63.8 billion last year. Seeing this, what does Tad do in response? How about guaranteeing the Alfred Taubman Estate a mind boggling $509 million for their collection, just to keep it out of the hands of those evil fuckers at Christie’s?
Yeah, he did that too. In turn, Sotheby’s was only able to recover $470 million in auction, with $33 million worth of unsold nonsense sitting in inventory. Then again, I am merely a rube from the sewers of Brooklyn. What the hell do I know?
Tad likes to call this ‘Le Slide’
Oh, I forgot to mention that Alfred Taubman’s son was on the Sotheby board. I am sure it was just a coincidence and there wasn’t a conflict of interest. No matter what I think, after the failed auction, he was summarily dismissed from the board, given his paltry $161,354 in compensation for 2015, and told to go and never to come back again. Ever!
There’s a fuckery occurring at BID and Tad the cable guy is at the root of it.
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It seems that a lot of people hiring CEOs for their companies, have trouble telling incompetent people from competent people. Some CEO types are so in love with themselves that they convince other people to fall in love with them too– at least for an extremely lucrative year or more on the part of the CEO.
Some people on company boards seem to have the delusion that an Ivy League education plus a great deal of confidence always indicates competence. But au contraire, mon frere.
I have never liked people named Tad. I do not know why, it is just a thing.
How about Tad’s steakhouse?