Personality Premiums at Public Companies

by: Paul Kedrosky posted on: June 11, 2008 | about stocks: AAPL / BRCM / BRK.A    

Nattering about Steve Jobs' health, as well as a WSJ story this morning about the cult of personality that grew up around Broadcom's (BRCM) Henry Nicholas, got me thinking about personality premiums at public companies. What U.S. public companies have the largest share price premiums attached to their current CEOs? In other words, which companies would see the largest share price declines were their CEOs to be incapacitated, hit by a bus, abducted by someone from Betelgeuse, etc.?

Some candidates:

  • Steve Jobs. Apple's CEO is the heart and soul of the story at Apple. That company has to be near the top of the list of PP (Personality Premium) stocks.
  • Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway's main man likely doesn't have the premium he did a few years ago, but it's still outsized. A transition is coming, and has been long-discussed, but the stock could easily decline on a change.

Anyone have suggestions for other CEOs with positive premiums? Let's leave aside the CEOs with negative premiums for now. We can beat up on them later.

This article has 5 comments! Add yours below...
Paul Kedrosky

Paul Kedrosky

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This article has 5 comments:

  •  
    Daniel
    Jacome
    Jun 11 01:47 PM
    My Website
    definitely ORCL and DELL. and how can you forget MSFT?
  •  
    darwin666
    Jun 11 03:10 PM
    how about Companies where if the personality were to leave, their stock would go up. ie. negative premiums.. YHOO for example.. ha ha.
  •  
    asagefield
    Jun 11 05:25 PM
    My Website
    Two very nice picks. I would add that it is a skill and personality combination premium. They both have charisma and extremely effective architectural leanings for wealth building.

    I would add the Google founders to your list. They are structuralists as well. They might not be as charismatic, but their skill premium is great, building a company from an engineering point of view is revolutionary.

  •  
    dragon10
    Jun 11 08:15 PM
    FORD, TOYODA, PORSHE, YSL, GUCCI,....
  •  
    phildewey
    Jun 11 11:46 PM
    CSCO
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