Berkshire Industries : Overview And History

Braum’s Incorporation is a vertically integrated company (owns multiple segments of industry and merges them together) which allows them to produce their products to the quality and standards they want. The corporation produces meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. They have 280 stores located throughout Kansas, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, and the majority located in Oklahoma, where their headquarters are (About Us 2016). The chains of stores located in these areas provide hamburgers, ice cream, and a small grocery store for their customers. Although Braum’s provides all of these commodities they’re mainly known for their ice cream.

The principal motive for the Harnischfeger management was to show profit in 1984. This was necessary since the company was preparing to celebrate 100 years of doing business and management was eager to prove to investors that the company was doing well. Management was also motivated by incentive compensation; the board of directors established an Executive Incentive Plan which provided an incentive compensation opportunity of 40% of annual salary for 11 senior executive officers only if the Corporation reached a specific net after-tax profit objective

Compensation systems can take on many forms, all of which have positives and negatives related to it. However, certain components are noted to be determinants of solid compensation plans. One agreement of a solid compensation system is the use of incentives. “Clearly a successful companies set objectives that will provide incentives to increase profitability” (Needles & Powers, 2011). Incentive bonuses should be measures that the company finds important to long-term growth. According to Needles & Powers (2011) the most successful companies long term focused on profitability measures. For large for-profit firms, compensation programs should offer stock options. The interweaving between the market value of a company’s stock and company’s performance both motivate and increase compensation to employees As the market value of the stock goes up, the difference between the option price and the market price grows, which increases the amount of compensation” (Needles & Powers, 2011). Conclusively, a compensation plan should serve all stakeholders, be simple, group employees properly, reflect company culture and values, and be flexible (Davis & Hardy, 1999; The Basics of a Compensation Program).

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

The new system was solving a problem where a bulk employees were getting high rating when their department was failing to achieve production goals and time-to-market

share increased an average of 27% per year. This remarkable increase in earnings did not go

The return on equity (ROE) has also shown an increase in 2009 over the previous year suggesting a successful investment by shareholders. This increase, coupled with the fact that the basic earnings per share (EPS) has increased significantly from 61.78 cents in 2008 to 88.26 cents in 2009 (143%) shows great improvement in the profit per share. Please note that the basic EPS has been used in this analysis as the diluted EPS includes employee options (JBH Annual Report, 2009), skewing and reducing the value of the EPS.

1. Determine the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) based on using retained earnings in the capital structure.

Like several companies, Nortel stipendiary their executives with stock choices (Collins, 2011). This compensation solely inspired the tendency to be but honest regarding the company’s finances. author closely-held stock choices that solely inspired his actions to fulfill or beat the benchmark set by analysts. If Nortel’s earnings showed to be higher than the benchmark, Nortel’s stock costs would rise creating the stock closely-held by management to be even a lot of valuable. By tweaking the books to indicate the road earnings price as critical the allowable accumulation price he created the stakeholders assume that the corporate was creating extra money than it had been. “Nortel ne'er incomprehensible a benchmark over the sixteen quarters (Collins, 2011).” it had been too tempting to bump the numbers up so the stocks gave the impression to be value over they were. “Nortel’s accounting practices junction rectifier to AN investigation by AN freelance review committee, that found that insubordination with accumulation and accounting fraud were undertaken to fulfill internally obligatory earnings targets (Collins, 2011).”

Dunlap’s salary was just over $500k and he took no bonus. But he received a substantial stock option and award package. The restricted stock award component was to vest in two years, meaning that Dunlap’s compensation would be closely linked to the company’s stock performance for that time. Although the short term profits benefited shareholders, no incentives to create a long term, profitable company existed. Sunbeam’s performance-based incentives brought greater motivation to Dunlap to increase the firm’s stock value by any means necessary. He created remarkable shareholder value, in part by cutting half the company's 12,000 workers and closing many plants. Generally speaking, the first compensation package was excessive, but it linked the CEO’s and stockholders’ goals. It was not well designed, but it was congruent with Sunbeam’s business model of maximizing shareholder profits, but it drove an unhealthy behavior.

It was reasonable for a CEO’s compensation to increase as the company expanded and became a larger entity, and the newly-granted shares and increasing stock options further aligned the CEO’s personal interests with those of the company and shareholders. In this sense, the second compensation package was also well-structured and not excessive. Seeing Sunbeam’s revenue rising and stock price climbing steeply upwards, Sunbeam’s shareholders and directors were fully convinced by Dunlap’s leadership, so they might perceive the increase in compensation amount necessary to retain and better motivate Dunlap to enhance the company’s value. Nonetheless, they neglected the fact that the increased portion of the equity-based compensation also further motivated the CEO’s dangerous behaviors pertaining to improper earnings management.

Warren E. Buffett is to measure performance by gain in intrinsic value on a per-share basis, not accounting profit. In my viewpoint, this would not be true since both individual and the whole performance should be taken into account.

A major role of this committee is the reviewing of the Company’s compensation strategy. Ensuring that the compensation strategy aligns with their goal to attract and retain high-quality leadership is crucial to the success of The Home Depot. They must make certain that management is awarded the appropriate incentives and rewarded appropriately for its contributions to the growth and profitability of the Company. The Home Depot’s compensation strategy must also align with all of the Company’s objectives and stockholder interests. ("Leadership development &," 2013)

The dividends that stockholders receive and the value of their stock shares depend on the business’s profit performance. Managers’ jobs depend on living up to the business’s profit goals.

This makes the company look good and they can afford to do this from good financial skills. Decisions like this make a good profit in the long run and all in all this is why it is so important to have a good management team.