Well, I guess this means I’ll find another lawsuit from Jonathan Ornstein in my mail box, but what the hell.
I mean, if I can’t talk about the news, then I guess I might as well move to Russia. Oh, that’s right. That’s all I was doing before — and I still got sued.
Okay, somebody’s got to see if the First Amendment is still valid.
Today Herb Greenberg, who writes a column for MarketWatch.com, appears on CNBC’s Squawk Box, and who used to be a fellow columnist with me when we both wrote for TheStreet.com — came out with his choice of the worst CEO for 2007.
Needless to say, given the financial hijinks of a number of financial sector CEOs this year, Herb’s pool of potential candidates was deep and wide.
But instead of one of the investment or financial nominees, Herb chose Eddie Lampert, Chairman of the Board of Sears as the Worst CEO of 2007.
Okay, so what does this have to do with anything airline related?
Because while Mr. Lampert was the recipient of Herb’s top award, a nice chunk of his diatribe this morning on CNBC concerned another CEO who we are all more familiar with. That CEO? Jonathan Ornstein of Mesa Air Group.
As Herb said in his column today on MarketWatch,
“Away from financial services, Mesa Air’s Jonathan Ornstein received the most write-in votes by employees, investors and employees of competitors. (It was an impressive, concerted campaign.) Not only does the company suffer the lowest margins and boast the worst-performing stock among regional airlines, with “skyrocketing” pilot attrition (per an Air Line Pilots Association press release), but it recently was embarrassed after a judge ruled that Mesa must pay $80 million to Hawaiian Air for using confidential, proprietary information to start its inter-island Hawaiian competitor, “go!” (Mesa says it plans to appeal.)”
If you’d like to see Herb’s animated stint on CNBC this morning, where he also talked about Mr. O in less-than-flattering terms, you can watch here.
Ticker: (Nasdaq:MESA)
Technorati Tags: airline CEOs, Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa Air Group
Ornstein is the biggest idiot of them all. He is not smart, he is not an entrepreneur, the shyster just got lucky taking advantage of war fears after 911. After Ron Burkle takes the rest of Mesa’s money, JO should be put on trial for profiting off the war. Throw JO down the well!