The WSJ Health Blog has a very interesting item today. Apparently, the fact that Wyeth CEO Essner is retiring from the job early, at the age of 60, is "a life-style choice."
A number of news outlets had questioned the background for this decision, as I detailed in my post Wyeth names new CEO and causes surprise.
So the company found itself in the less enviable position of having to explain the rationale, and a Wyeth board member made himself available to the WSJ and declared that "Essner was just ready to move on."
Apparently the Wyeth board is "stunned that people are reading tea leaves here and coming up with these explanations that are really quite detached from reality.”
Paraphrasing Shakespear: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Reality is that retiring early from a CEO job has proven very hard for most corporate executives and when someone does this, it shouldn't be stunning if people try to come up with explanations.
Somehow the perks, the power, and the compensation is hard to let go of. Essner pocketed $32.8 million, including options, according to the Wyeth proxy. Not exactly spare change.
In fact, the probability for any CEO to just pack up is probably less than 1 in a 100. And the probability that both the CFO and the CEO decide to make that "life-style choice" a few months apart, without any fire somewhere, may be closer to 1 in a 1,000. Or perhaps 1 in a million.
Remember, Wyeth's CFO, Ken Martin, who is only 53, and had been financial chief since 2000, also announced he would "pursue personal interests" and left Wyeth in June.
But Wyeth may be that 1 in a million company.
We wish Mr. Essner best of luck.
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Posted by: Burton | October 14, 2007 at 08:37 AM