Monster for sale
An industry wag sends this very interesting message from the Yahoo! MNST message boards:
"...on September 8, 2005, the Compensation Committee of the Company's Board of Directors authorized the Company to enter into amendments of the employment letters or agreements with each of Andrew J. McKelvey, William Pastore, Paul Camara, Charles Baker, John Mclaughlin, Myron Olesnyckyj, Brian Farrey and Peter Dolphin (each an "Executive")...The amendments provide, among other things, that if after a change in control of the Company, the Executive is subjected to an excise tax under Section 4999 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the "Excise Tax"), because of payments made under his employment letter or agreement and any benefit received under any other agreement, including the value of accelerated vesting of stock options (referred to collectively as "Change in Control Payments"), the Company must pay the Executive the amount necessary to place him in the same after-tax position (i.e., after the payment of federal income tax and the Excise Tax) as he would have been in if the Change in Control Payments were not subject to the Excise Tax..."WHY DO THEY ALL NEED THIS PROVISION ALL OF A SUDDEN?
$45!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the commenter is exactly right. There is no reason at all that Andy McKelvey(!!) of all people would want a change-of-control provision in his contract unless they were contemplating a sale. And the breadth of the folks covered: EVP, CFO, CTO, etc. makes it pretty plainly clear that the company is trying to keep its senior management team in place during a transition.
An additional question would be: "why now?" You know, perhaps this is just a standard corporate action?
Well, given that Andy's ownership position in the company was greatly reduced over 4 years ago by a margin call, it would seem odd to have waited all this time to shore up Andy's position.
So my read on the announcement: MNST is for sale.
