I can’t help but read about the governance farce happening at JC Penney these days and think: Anyone with a pulse can see the characters involved aren’t setting a good tone at the top for a once-respectable retailer. They are screeching at each other while the rest of the business wonders who will be unemployed next. This melodrama is as bad as it gets.
The villain in the JC Penney debacle is Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager who blustered his way onto the company’s board in 2011 with a 16 percent stake in the business. Ackman’s complaint at the time was that then-CEO Myron Ullman was letting the stock price and the company wheeze their way into obscurity, and convinced the board to fire Ullman.
