Originally Posted by
mistaTea
I think one has to separate perceived errors in strategic judgement with how he behaved towards shareholders.
In my view, if you looked through his record, you would have to draw the conclusion that he was definitely trying to maximise shareholder earnings/wealth throughout. He would not, for example, pay over the odds for content no matter how great it was. There were times in the past where he would have to reluctantly pass on some content because to 'win' the content would be too destructive to shareholder wealth. As a quick aside, more often than not when a party would pay over the odds to outbid John on some content, they very seldom did it a second time when the rights were up for renewal again. Reason being that they were not able to make any money off the content and would not be able to sustain another loss moving forward.
John definitely made mistakes around strategy with regards to streaming. He did not want to cannibalise his high margin satellite base as he wanted to maximise earnings for shareholders. So in his way he was looking out for shareholders, however it was a strategic mistake in my view. It is entirely possibly to have your shareholders best interests at heart and still cock up.
As I have outlined previously, his last gift to shareholders was supposed to be the Vodafone merger. He saw the writing on the wall when Netflix entered the market, and Vodafone-Sky would have been a terrific business. It was blocked by the regulators, and John quickly formed the view that he was no longer the best person to lead the company. It was not in shareholders best interests.
And this is key. He was getting paid $2M a year and The Board were not asking for him to resign. He could have stayed on if he just wanted to line his own pockets.
John Fellet was not perfect and made mistakes for sure (show me a leader anywhere who hasn't). You can acknowledge his errors but still give credit where credit is due though.
Ah Christ, I think I just became a FELLET FANBOY!