Your premise, that no one was 'running the store' is incorrect. There are more than 80,000 employees at United, the vast majority are capable of doing their job with no/minimal supervision.
Like any other corporation, United is able to function just fine without the CEO working 24/7. And rather than United being hobbled by Oscar's illness, I would argue that it was beneficial in that most employees worked harder and were focused on United being successful. The proof is in the performance numbers.
This isn't the first company that's had a CEO take an extended leave of absence and it won't be the last. Frankly, I don't understand your obsession with Oscar. You are trying to blame him for everything.
Originally Posted by
rp2pilot
I agree 100% with you. I will say this .. if these Gordon Gecko's actually do manage to take over the board, United will tank operationally. I would rather see this place go down in flames than watch some corporate raiders walk away with billions. I'm confident the majority of the employees feel the same way.
I don't expect any of Altimer/PAR's nominees to get elected. From my readings of various financial blogs, it appears that they don't have a large enough voting block to succeed and the way that directors are elected, the odds are stacked against them. However, they chose Gordo in order to try to leverage his name recognition so we'll have to see how things progress.
Altimeter's portfolio is very concentrated in UAL stock and they're probably using a lot of margin in order to buy more shares of stock. I've looked over their SEC filings and they increased their UAL holdings by ~900K shares since 31 Dec. IF UAL's stock price moves lower, Altimeter will probably blow up because the size of their position is so big that it would take several weeks to sell all of their stock.
IF they're able to get their directors elected, I'd love to see United employees drag down our performance numbers in the hope that the stock price tanks.