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Don Tyson likes to fly a lot.

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TARSman

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Did you see the news blurb in yesterday's USA Today entitled, "Flying into the sunset?" Interesting comments about Don Tyson.

"Some executives retain rights to company-paid personal flights (in public companies) after they retire. Under a consulting agreement that calls for a maximum 20 hours a week of 'advisory' services (which, to me, means that he really doesn't have to do anything when they say 'a maximum'), former Tyson Foods chairman Don Tyson gets $1.2 million annually through 2011, plus 150 hours of personal use of company aircraft for himself or designated passengers. In fiscal 2004, his flight time cost the company $92,764."

The 1.2 mil and the flight costs would be in the expense category in the company books, right? If the market sets the selling price of beef (the income side - which has to offset more than expenses to yield a profit), how does the company offset "Don's perks?"

Just thought I would stir up the water a little. :)
 
TARSman said:
Did you see the news blurb in yesterday's USA Today entitled, "Flying into the sunset?" Interesting comments about Don Tyson.

"Some executives retain rights to company-paid personal flights (in public companies) after they retire. Under a consulting agreement that calls for a maximum 20 hours a week of 'advisory' services (which, to me, means that he really doesn't have to do anything when they say 'a maximum'), former Tyson Foods chairman Don Tyson gets $1.2 million annually through 2011, plus 150 hours of personal use of company aircraft for himself or designated passengers. In fiscal 2004, his flight time cost the company $92,764."

The 1.2 mil and the flight costs would be in the expense category in the company books, right? If the market sets the selling price of beef (the income side - which has to offset more than expenses to yield a profit), how does the company offset "Don's perks?"

Just thought I would stir up the water a little. :)


I think if Don Tyson wants to do something like this, he probably dam sure earned the right to do it! If anyone thinks different, it's just pure jealousy. If you divide the $1.2mil by the number of cows in the US, it comes out to 3 cents per head. Whoop-de-do.
 
GETS KIND OF HARD FEELING SORRY FOR THE "POOR" PACKERS AND ALL THE MONEY THEY'RE lOSING :?


BEEF NEWS
Golden handshake: Simons receives $7.2 million severance

by Pete Hisey on 4/29/2005 for Meatingplace.com




Swift & Co. has given former chief executive John Simons a parting gift worth roughly $7.2 million, including $2.3 million in severance pay, $3.4 million for 4 million unused stock options, and $1.2 million for about 1.2 million shares of Swift stock, according to the Rocky Mountain News. He will also receive fees for a six-month consultancy of about $225,000. The settlement is, coincidentally, almost equal to the $7.25 million the company has earned in the first three quarters of fiscal 2005.
 
Don Tyson Took In Millions

In Poorly Disclosed Perks;

$84,000 in Lawn Care



By DEBORAH SOLOMON

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

April 29, 2005; Page A1



During his four years as senior chairman of Tyson Foods Inc., the perks Don Tyson received were striking even in an era of lavish executive compensation.



They included $464,132 for personal use by him and his family and friends of company-owned homes in the English countryside and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, $20,000 for oriental rugs, $18,000 of antiques, $84,000 in lawn maintenance at five homes where he and his family and friends lived, an $8,000 horse, and other jewelry, artwork, vacations and theater tickets. The company also paid Mr. Tyson $1.1 million to cover his personal income-tax liability associated with all these benefits.



Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission said those perks were among $3 million in benefits the Springdale, Ark., company paid Mr. Tyson between 1997 and 2001. As part of a broad crackdown on hidden executive compensation, the SEC said that Tyson Foods failed to disclose over $1 million in perks and made misleading or inadequate disclosures about other benefits.





The company agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle the charges. Mr. Tyson, who built the company into a poultry giant and remains a director, was charged with causing and aiding and abetting the company's violation and agreed to pay $700,000 to settle the civil case. He also agreed to repay $1.5 million to the company for "certain items" that the board identified during an internal review.



Under terms of the settlement agreement, Tyson and Mr. Tyson, 74 years old, didn't admit or deny the allegations. John Tyson, chairman and CEO of Tyson Foods and the son of Don Tyson, said in a statement that the company has "put additional controls and procedures in place to help ensure executive perquisites are being properly tracked and disclosed in the future."



The Arkansas magnate, who received $1.1 million in additional perks, some of which were improperly or not disclosed after he retired in 2001, had the company pick up the tab for numerous services used by his wife, daughters and three girlfriends, according to people familiar with the matter. While senior chairman, Mr. Tyson spent $46,110 to maintain nine automobiles, $15,000 on Christmas gift certificates and $203,675 on housekeeping services at five homes owned by Mr. Tyson, his family and three friends "with whom he had close personal relationships," the SEC said.



Barry Levine, Mr. Tyson's attorney and a partner with Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP, said his client "would never knowingly do anything that would undermine the interests of the company or do anything that would impair its image." He declined to comment on the "close personal" friends cited in the SEC complaint.





Mr. Tyson, whose net worth Forbes magazine last year estimated at $925 million, has a 10-year consulting contract with the company that pays him $1.2 million annually, plus health insurance and reimbursement of "business related expenses." Under terms of the contract, Mr. Tyson receives personal use of company-owned skyboxes and vacation homes at "pre-established daily rates," which he must repay to the company. The company also pays for up to 1,500 hours per year of security services at about $40 per hour and reimbursement for costs he incurs in tax and estate planning. Mr. Tyson also gets up to 150 hours per year of personal use of company aircraft for himself and designated passengers. None of these disclosed payments were cited in the SEC complaint.



Founded in 1935 by Don Tyson's father, who started out by hauling Arkansas chickens to Chicago and other big cities, the business rapidly expanded and went public in 1963. Mr. Tyson became CEO and chairman in 1967 and revolutionized the chicken industry by controlling both bird farms and slaughtering plants. Tyson prospered with the nation's increasing appetite for chicken. Mr. Tyson stepped down as CEO in 1991, served as chairman until 1995 and then as senior chairman until 2001.



In 2001, his son, John Tyson, who had taken over as CEO, engineered an ambitious acquisition of IBP Inc., a meatpacking giant twice its size, expanding the poultry company into beef and pork. As the chicken and meat businesses entered a cyclical downturn, the elder Mr. Tyson tried to kill the IBP deal and Tyson Foods walked away from the merger pact. But after a Delaware judge ruled that Tyson Foods improperly backed out of the deal, the company went through with the acquisition. Since then, analysts say, the elder Mr. Tyson hasn't been as involved in the business, which now has $26 billion in sales. He is said to spend much of his time fishing.



The Tyson settlement came as another case involving lavish compensation was unfolding in criminal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors yesterday grilled L. Dennis Kozlowski for allegedly looting Tyco International Ltd. of more than $150 million and spending lavishly on personal effects such as a $6,000 shower curtain. Mr. Kozlowski denies wrongdoing. In testimony Wednesday, he said he never personally approved the purchase of many items for the apartment, including the shower curtain and an umbrella stand that were seized on by prosecutors in the earlier trial as proof of an extravagant lifestyle.



The SEC has also sued Mr. Kozlowski and two others for fraud.



Under Chairman William Donaldson, the SEC has made better disclosure of executive compensation a priority, and the agency may beef up rules governing what companies must disclose.



"Shareholders have a right to know what company assets are used for," said Paul Berger, associate director of enforcement at the SEC. "That kind of information gives shareholders the power to make good, thoughtful investment decisions."



Earlier this year, the SEC settled charges with Walt Disney Co. for failing to disclose certain compensation paid to a director, as well as some relationships and transactions between the company and members of its board.



The move for better disclosure of executive perks was set off by disclosures in 2002 about the employment contract of Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric Co. Mr. Welch received reimbursement for numerous personal expenses, including unlimited personal use of GE's planes and office space. Investors and governance experts were outraged that a wealthy and well-respected CEO would seek payment for normal, day-to-day expenses. Mr. Welch himself acknowledged that the perks made him look greedy, and GE later settled SEC charges that it failed to fully disclose benefits it agreed to provide him.



Regulators said the Tyson board's compensation committee knew about some of what Mr. Tyson was spending because of disclosures made in annual proxy statements. But SEC officials said board members were unaware of the "nature and scope" of the benefits and didn't know about certain amounts because Mr. Tyson failed to include the full amount when he filled out a corporate questionnaire.



From 1997 to 2001, the SEC said, Tyson disclosed some but not all of Mr. Tyson's perks and personal benefits in a proxy statement footnote. The SEC also said the proxy disclosure was inadequate because it misclassified certain expenses as "travel" or "entertainment."



There have long been complaints from shareholders that Mr. Tyson treats the company as a family-owned empire. Under a two-tier stock system, Don Tyson and his family control 80% of the votes despite owning just 30% of the shares in the company. The board also includes several members who have business dealings with Tyson.



In 1997 Tyson pleaded guilty to providing former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy with $12,000 in illegal gratuities. While neither Mr. Tyson nor his son faced charges, Tyson agreed to pay $4 million in criminal fines and $2 million in investigative costs.




The Tysons were close to another famous Arkansas family, the Clintons. President Clinton, prior to leaving office, pardoned Archie Schaffer III, the former chief spokesman for Tyson, who had been convicted of giving an illegal gratuity to Mr. Espy. Mr. Espy was eventually acquitted of criminal charges.
 
Nice little tite-knit group here. Remember when Mr. Tyson helped Hillary make a $100,000.00 out of a $1,000.00 investment in cattle futures?

These are my kind of folks! Honest as the day is long. :wink:
 
I always wonder if those guys are drawing their social security benefits--probably got their chauffer to stand in line to sign them up....

Years ago I knew an old fella that owned several large farm and ranch operations, a couple of banks plus a few million $ more in investments---Now he could of bought several hospitals, but instead he would get in his Cadillac and drive 180 miles several times a week to the Indian Health Services so he could take advantage of the free medical service his being a tribal member allowed him.....

Probably the reason he made it all in the first place.....
 
Mike said:
Nice little tite-knit group here. Remember when Mr. Tyson helped Hillary make a $100,000.00 out of a $1,000.00 investment in cattle futures?

These are my kind of folks! Honest as the day is long. :wink:


REspone: I don't believe Tyson had anything to do with Hillary's futures trading. The broker was from Arkansas and was part of a group who's trading was more than suspect. He was eventually banned from trading. The whole group he was involved with should have been banned from trading for ever.
 
agman said:
Mike said:
Nice little tite-knit group here. Remember when Mr. Tyson helped Hillary make a $100,000.00 out of a $1,000.00 investment in cattle futures?

These are my kind of folks! Honest as the day is long. :wink:


REspone: I don't believe Tyson had anything to do with Hillary's futures trading. The broker was from Arkansas and was part of a group who's trading was more than suspect. He was eventually banned from trading. The whole group he was involved with should have been banned from trading for ever.

In New York's Senate race, Republican Rick Lazio has been too gentlemanly to remind voters of the murkier issues surrounding his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton's campaign is even crying foul over Mr. Lazio daring to circulate copies of our recent editorial arguing that a Senate victory, given her prominent role in scandal defense, would be an "an absolution of her husband's moral and ethical standards." So we guess it's also up to us to indelicately mention another of those flagrantly disturbing episodes in Mrs. Clinton's career: her quick profit of nearly $100,000 on a $1,000 stake in the futures markets.

The big question, still, is whether Mrs. Clinton was, as she said, just well-advised and "lucky," or whether--via the filter of the futures markets--she took a fat bribe and then coolly lied about it.




It has become accepted wisdom that the matter was settled in 1994 when Mrs. Clinton, under public pressure, dressed herself in pink and held a press conference in the White House. Perched under a portrait of Honest Abe Lincoln, Mrs. Clinton described her astounding gains back in 1978-79 as simply "a good investment offered by somebody who knew a lot."

But "good investment" does not begin to describe Mrs. Clinton's highly unusual return of almost 10,000% over 10 months in the futures markets. Back in 1979, that big a lump of pin money came to more than the annual incomes of both Clintons combined. To achieve such gains, Mrs. Clinton--assuming she was trading honestly, not with some private understanding of guaranteed "profits"--had to put many times the family income repeatedly at risk, an odd move if the aim was, as she said, to "try to create some financial security for our family. . . ."

In places like the trading pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, whence emanated Mrs. Clinton's super-profits, there are pros who know plenty about how things work. "It's a mockery of the profession to say you took a thousand dollars and made a hundred thousand," says Joe Gressel, a 19-year veteran of the Merc's trading pits. "Around here," he adds, in a sentiment echoed by some of his colleagues, "we're flabbergasted that she's bamboozled the people of New York state."

The basic plot line of Mrs. Clinton's foray into the futures markets (keep your eye on two players--lawyer James Blair and broker Robert "Red" Bone) is that in October 1978, she put up $1,000 to start trading through Mr. Bone, who worked in the Arkansas office of a brokerage firm called Refco. Mrs. Clinton said she did this at the urging of a friend, Mr. Blair, who until early this year was chief in-house counsel for Arkansas-based Tyson Foods.




Over 10 months, buying and selling futures contracts in a variety of commodities, especially cattle, Mrs. Clinton after various ups and downs had made nearly $100,000, and in July 1979 got out of the market. While this was going on, Bill Clinton had advanced from the influential position of Arkansas attorney general to the more powerful job of governor.

By Mrs. Clinton's account, she consulted Mr. Blair often during her trading days, but made actual decisions herself. "Jim would call me on a regular basis and I would make a decision whether or not I would trade, and then the trade would be placed. Often he placed it for me. There was nothing wrong with that," said Mrs. Clinton, in her pink press conference.

Maybe not. But did Mrs. Clinton's profits really come from whatever orders she gave Mr. Blair? Or--as some futures experts still wonder--did she have a helping hand at Refco, ensuring her a huge net gain by salting some big winners among otherwise legitimate ups and downs?




By several accounts, there was a lot of latitude at Refco for something Hillary insisted she did not get--"favoritism." According to a market veteran who worked as a clerk for Refco at the time, Mrs. Clinton's version that she called the shots, trade-by-trade, on her relatively small lots of individual deals, is implausible.

The late 1970s brought a roaring and volatile cattle market, and Refco was one of the most fast-and-loose brokerage firms in the business. In the normal course of trading, futures dealers are supposed to specify which trades are done for which customers. But this former Refco clerk says business at that stage was so brisk that Refco deals were done mainly in big blocks--far bigger than Hillary's individual recorded orders. Only later would the brokers code transactions by customer and decide which trade--meaning what profit or loss--to parcel out to whom. "When Hillary came forward and said she was doing her own trades, I knew immediately that she wasn't telling the truth," says this former clerk.

His doubts bear noting, especially because soon after Hillary cashed in her profits, the Merc accused Refco of breaking the rules and Mr. Bone, in particular, of "serious and repeated violations of record-keeping functions, order-entry procedures, margin requirements and hedge procedures." Without confirming or denying the charges, Refco Chairman Thomas Dittmer and Mr. Bone agreed to penalties imposed by the exchange. Mrs. Clinton was among the customers for whom Refco traded without requiring the normal amount of margin money needed to cover likely losses.

The issue boils down to whether Mrs. Clinton was exceptional enough to have been both one of the luckiest amateur futures traders ever as well as a customer for whom Mr. Bone and Refco, while overlooking margin requirements and a host of other rules for at least some of their customers, otherwise played it straight. Or did Mrs. Clinton let Refco fiddle her accounts to deliver huge net gain, while she herself was either too careless to notice, or too dishonest to protest?

The question becomes all the more interesting because it isn't merely a matter of history. There is room to wonder whether there were swaps of favors over the years. Mrs. Clinton's mentor of the market, Mr. Blair, numbers among the Clintons' Lincoln-bedroom guests, both from the early 1990s and the past 15 months. And Mr. Blair's longtime employer, Tyson Foods, has enjoyed boosts from Mr. Clinton since Hillary's trading days. To give a fairly recent example, in 1996 both President Clinton and Vice President Gore went to bat personally to persuade Russia's President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to continue allowing the import of some $600 million a year worth of chicken, the bulk produced by Tyson Foods.




Probably the most influential expert on futures seen to have defended Mrs. Clinton is former chairman of the Chicago Merc, Leo Melamed. At the special request of the White House, Mr. Melamed in 1994 looked through Mrs. Clinton's old trading records. He concluded that Mrs. Clinton herself had not violated any rules of the exchange--her broker did that.

But the issue is not whether Mrs. Clinton broke the rules of the Merc, which is what Mr. Melamed chose to address. Rather, it is whether--or to what extent--she knowingly let other people break the rules for her and then lied about it. Interviewed by phone this week, Mr. Melamed said he had been concerned only with the rules of the Merc. As far as any private understanding Mrs. Clinton might have had with her broker, says Mr. Melamed: "Those are not things I was looking at, nor did I give a damn."

Maybe only Messrs. Blair and Bone and Mrs. Clinton herself can say for sure whether she was just a hapless beneficiary of a generous and rule-breaking broker, hand-picked by a clever friend whose company later got some business help from the Clinton administration; or whether she took a payoff and lied about it. Given that Mrs. Clinton is now running for a job of public trust in the Senate--a place where one might want to keep bribe-takers to a minimum--it seems a question still worth asking.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."
 
I recall talk at cattlemen's meetings of how virtually impossible it would be for to have done as she claimed, to earn her $100,000.00;

Sort of makes Martha Stewart look like an amateur, IMO.

MRJ
 

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