Mean Street: New Motorola CEO, Welcome to My Pain

August 5, 2008 at 4:32 pm PT

What do CEOs say to each other in private? Mean Street intercepted an (imaginary) email sent this morning by Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to Sanjay Jha, newly appointed co-CEO of Motorola.

Dear Sanjay,

Many congratulations on your new job–and welcome to our ranks. It is a rare privilege to be CEO of a desperate company.

I’ve been at it now for almost nine months at Merrill Lynch, and I’ve learned a thing or two that you might find useful.

I hate to start on a sour note, but Monday’s announcement could have been handled better. Your arrival at Motorola was trumpeted a bit too loudly.

“A stunning win for Motorola,” cheered the Wall Street analysts. And your recruitment alone added more than $2 billion to the market value of Motorola.

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Tagged with: CEO, Evan Newmark, frontpage, John Thain, Mean Street, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, Sanjay Jha, Wall Street Journal Online

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