Section FiveAlthough his performance was just plain terrible
most of the time, EDS’s board lavished upon him
vast sums of money: a total compensation
package worth more than $13.8 million in 1997.
Yet you’d have to search long and hard during
Alberthal’s nearly twelve years as CEO to find an
instance when EDS outperformed the Standard &
Poor’s 500 Index, a listing of five hundred stocks
that is the premier gauge of the stock market.
Actually, there is one instance that springs to
mind, and that was August 7, 1998, the day after
EDS announced his retirement. That day the
company’s stock price jumped 14 percent, adding
$2.5 billion to the total market value of the stock.
It’s not often that a CEO can determine just how
much impact he personally is having on his com-
pany’s stock price, but for Alberthal, August 7
was one for the books.^65