Former McDonald’s C.E.O. Repays Company $105 Million
Oh how intoxicating the power over another’s income or stature or comfort can be! It was enough to cause Steve Easterbrook’s brain to shut down and believe himself to be protected by an invisible force in some impregnable place.
The story serves to remind how important it is for people in positions of power over others anywhere, but certainly in the workplace where there are rules and laws that clearly define acceptable parameters, to be vigilant about their own thoughts, words and actions.
That power can be misleading as reflected in this cringe-worthy story that illustrates the importance of staying beyond reproach at all times, to behave at all times.
I’ve been fortunate, that after enough of my own blunders to get my attention my guide became, “how would I feel and behave if my youngest child Genevieve was in the room.” Certainly not to claim anything close to perfection since, but that discipline has served me well! Steve has paid dearly for not having such a filter.
Because he is smart and charming and a great lier, he was able to keep his activities in the shadows and elude “the light” for a long time, not realizing that he was just digging a deeper and deeper pit with every passing day.
The truth of the matter is that he wasn’t properly taught how the “Law of Cause & Effect” works in real time as he was growing up. Most of us are not!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/business/mcdonalds-steve-easterbrook.html?smid=em-share
Former McDonald’s C.E.O. Repays Company $105 Million
The settlement with Steve Easterbrook, who was ousted in 2019 for an inappropriate relationship, is one of the largest ever clawbacks of executive compensation.
David Gelles and
The former McDonald’s chief executive Steve Easterbrook, who was ousted by the company in 2019 for having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, has returned $105 million in cash and stock to the company in one of the largest clawbacks in the history of corporate America.
Mr. Easterbrook has been engaged in a contentious battle with McDonald’s for the past year, after the company sued him for lying to investigators at the time of his dismissal. As part of the deal announced on Thursday, McDonald’s agreed to drop its lawsuit against Mr. Easterbrook.
In a message to employees, Enrique Hernandez Jr., the McDonald’s chairman, said that the company wanted to hold Mr. Easterbrook “accountable for his lies and misconduct, including the way in which he exploited his position as C.E.O.,” and that this settlement achieved that goal.
Mr. Easterbrook was fired in 2019 after he engaged in a consensual relationship with an employee in violation of company policy, eventually setting off an unusually acrimonious fight between a wealthy executive and one of the country’s most prominent companies.
At the time of his dismissal, the McDonald’s board determined that Mr. Easterbrook had “demonstrated poor judgment,” but decided not to fire him “for cause” — that is, for being dishonest or committing a criminal act. That decision, the board hoped, would avoid a lengthy legal dispute. It also allowed Mr. Easterbrook to walk away with a compensation package worth more than $40 million. .
But according to the company’s lawsuit against Mr. Easterbrook, his contract contained a provision that would let McDonald’s recoup severance payments if it later determined the employee should have been fired for cause.
That clause became relevant in 2020, when a McDonald’s employee said that Mr. Easterbrook had a sexual relationship with another subordinate while he was chief executive. The new accusation spurred another investigation of Mr. Easterbrook’s records, and prompted the company to sue him last year, accusing its former chief of lying, concealing evidence and fraud.
During its investigation into the second accusation, McDonald’s said it found “dozens of nude, partially nude or sexually explicit photographs and videos of various women, including photographs of these company employees, that Easterbrook had sent as attachments to messages from his company email account to his personal email account.”
The company also revealed that Mr. Easterbrook had awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock to one of the women with whom he was having a sexual relationship. In its lawsuit, McDonald’s said that its former chief had lied to investigators in the initial inquiry, and that if he had “been candid with McDonald’s investigators and not concealed evidence, McDonald’s would have known that it had legal cause to terminate him in 2019.”
Mr. Easterbrook initially decided to fight the lawsuit, and his lawyers filed a motion to dismiss, calling it “meritless and misleading.”
During his time as chief executive, Mr. Easterbrook sold more than $64 million in stock; when he departed in 2019, the value of the stock and options he had been awarded was worth $41 million. But as McDonald’s stock has soared to $264 a share from $193 in 2019, the value of those stock and options has grown to $89 million, according to the executive compensation consulting firm Equilar. It is not clear whether Mr. Easterbrook sold any of his shares after he left the company.
Nonetheless, with his agreement to return the huge sum of cash and stock to the company, Mr. Easterbrook has effectively conceded what was shaping up to be a long and costly legal battle. Mr. Easterbrook apologized in a statement released by the company.
“During my tenure as C.E.O., I failed at times to uphold McDonald’s values and fulfill certain of my responsibilities as a leader of the company,” he said. “I apologize to my former co-workers, the board and the company’s franchisees and suppliers for doing so.”
Under Mr. Easterbrook’s successor, Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s has emerged as a clear winner during the pandemic the past two years. Thanks to a combination of increased drive-through business; a robust push of its mobile app and loyalty programs; and meal collaborations with various celebrities and groups, including the K-pop sensation BTS, revenues at McDonald’s are on track to top $23 billion this year, the highest level in five years.
Earlier this year, Mr. Kempczinski defended the board’s handling of Mr. Easterbrook’s firing. “I thought they handled it as best as they could,” he said.
Still, despite the company’s financial gains, a new training program for its restaurants and efforts to improve diversity and inclusion, some critics say not enough has been done to fix other problems that run deep in McDonald’s culture. The fast-food giant has faced myriad lawsuits and claims in recent years, some involving allegations of sexual harassment and others around racial discrimination.
“McDonald’s should use the money it got back from the former C.E.O. to develop a real plan to stop the rampant sexual harassment occurring from the drive-throughs to the C-suite,” the advocacy group Fight for $15 said in a statement.
In November, the release of text messages between Mr. Kempczinski and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot — in which he seemed to blame the deaths of two Black and Latino children on their parents — prompted calls for his resignation. An investment group representing union pension funds issued a shareholder proposal asking McDonald’s to conduct a third-party audit of its policies and practices around the civil rights of employees and consumers. Mr. Kempczinski has repeatedly apologized for the comments.
Dieter Waizenegger, the executive director of the SOC Investment Group, said that as a shareholder, he was pleased the compensation had been returned, but still felt the board failed to do its job.
“The board could have saved itself a lot of time and probably a lot in legal fees if they had conducted a thorough initial investigation of Easterbrook’s behavior in the first place,” said Mr. Waizenegger. “This settlement comes after two years of wrangling and airing of dirty laundry in the media.”
McDonald’s also still faces numerous shareholder lawsuits over the firing of the executive.
On Thursday, the company said that “Mr. Easterbrook would return equity awards and cash, with a current value of more than $105 million, which he would have forfeited had he been truthful at the time of his termination and, as a result, been terminated for cause.” It did not specify the proportion of cash and stock. McDonald’s shares are up more than 25 percent this year.
In his more than four years on the job, Mr. Easterbrook was credited with turning around McDonald’s and reviving its languishing stock price. As chief executive, he reduced costs, introduced touch-screen ordering and established all-day breakfast. Shares in the company roughly doubled.
The clawback of his compensation, while large, is not the biggest in corporate history, although many earlier situations involved allegations of financial or accounting fraud. In 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission recovered more than $400 million in profits made by William McGuire, the former chief executive of United Health, to settle claims related to a scheme involving the backdating of options. Later, Tyco International sued a former chief executive, Dennis Kozlowski, who had been convicted of looting the company, in an effort to collect $500 million he had received in compensation and benefits.
“While Steve’s misconduct need not be forgiven by any member of this community, he has apologized to his former co-workers, franchisees, suppliers and the board for the profound errors he made,” said Mr. Hernandez, the McDonald’s chairman. “Today’s resolution avoids a protracted court process and moves us beyond a chapter that belongs in our past.”
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Former McDonald’s C.E.O. Repays Company $105 Million
Former McDonald’s C.E.O. Repays Company $105 Million
Here’s a case of “Group malfeasance, blamed on poor judgement, from the consumption of too much wine!” A nine month investigation of the American chapter of “The Court of Master Sommeliers” has revealed a widespread expectation/demand of sexual favors in return for mentoring female applicants, undergoing the rigorous exam process, required for membership and recognition as an official Sommellier.
This follows the complaint of 21 women that their supposed mentors, had pressured them for sex, apparently a well-established condition with a long history. So far 22 men have been investigated.
The point being, that when a lowly activity becomes “institutionalized” in a grouping of people, ie: company, sport, union, association, religion, etc, it can go on undetected for a long time. It may even acquire an almost “accepted as part of the game” kind of cover, with those participating considering it, “just one of their perks”, and no big deal! That is, until someone blows the lid off.
That’s when everything changes for those who took part. It is not after all, that they didn’t know there was something amiss about the game they were playing. They just thought they had a really good cover! Instead, that cover just went poof, as all covers eventually do. Just another example that, “What Goes Around Comes Around!” Its just difficult to predict when.
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.