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Monitor

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Why you can trust SCMP

TUT, TUT. What a thing to see in this day and age that a reputable company should still indulge in such a perverse form of elitism. PCCW directors pay dwarfs rivals, said our headline last week.

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Just think of that. The rest of the company's employees undoubtedly receive their wages in sound Hong Kong dollars but staff members of diminutive stature are paid only in this new thing called rivals and, I ask you, how much food will these set on the table? It was quite right that this injustice should be blazoned on the front page.

Okay boss, I know there was an apostrophe after the word 'directors' in that headline to make it clear it was followed by a noun and not a verb, but I cannot have been the only person to read it first in the alternative sense.

And frankly, I find it harder to be indignant about the actual injustice our story trumpeted. So the CyberWok paid its directors HK$768 million in all forms of emoluments (mostly options, I would guess) for the year to December 2000. So what.

I admit my eyebrows went up on reading it too, but I would consider it a rank injustice only if there did not also exist a small piece of coloured paper called the sell slip in every stockbrokers' office. These have been put to good use on the CyberWok over the last two years. Just look at the performance of the share price in the chart.

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If it is retribution you want against the CyberWok for the payout, then remember that this retribution has already been visited on the stock in huge measure. Do you see that sudden drop from HK$15 in September 2000? That was after one of the directors, Francis Yuen Tin-fan, cashed in some of his options to buy a house on the Peak.

Leave retribution to the stock exchange or the Securities and Futures Commission and all you get is a light tap on the wrist and at most a negligible fine, but when investors believe things have gone amiss they exact a retribution that can cripple a company.

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