Ever since the New Year, the TV (not to mention online ads) have been full of promises offering people ways to lose weight or stop smoking. Wouldn’t it be nice if companies decided to break one of their nasty habits for the New Year? Trying to dump stuff late on a Friday before a holiday weekend? Disney, of course, filed its proxy late Friday, which disclosed, among other things, that it has spent $1 million on providing security to CEO Robert Iger over the past year. Last year, the company distinguished between what it spent on security equipment and security guards and by far the bigger amount was spent on the people. But this year, Disney didn’t choose to provide that breakdown.

There was also this interesting 8-K filed by Bearing Point (BE). The company has made something of a habit of filing interesting stuff late on a Friday before a holiday. In the 8-K, the company reported that former Accenture executive Ed Harbach had been named president and COO. Attached to the filing were several exhibits that spelled out the terms of Harbach’s employment, which will pay him $700K a year, give him a $1 million signing bonus and provide him with 888,325 options that vest over the next four years.

But it was something buried toward the end of the filing that caught my attention. Harbach is replacing Richard Roberts as COO, but there was no information on Roberts’ package. Will he be making the same $650K a year now that he’s been demoted? That detail was missing from the filing. Equally interesting was this "special termination agreement" that Harbach signed, which seems to set a pretty low threshold for an "acquiring person" of just 20%.

                                                                                        ♦♦♦♦

I’m heading to Paris later tonight for the famous Paris soldes. And, yes, I know the dollar is in the dumps! Since blogging and shopping aren’t always compatible, I’ll be taking a break for the next week. In my place will be my regular substitute who will be posting at night, instead of during the day since he needs to keep his day job. I’ll be back on Jan. 25.

Posted in Blog notes, Blog-reel, Buried treasure

1 Comment »