저자: CharlieMunger · 외국인
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스톡옵션은 비용이 아니라는 주장은 모순이며 회계상 비용으로 반영해야 한다고 주장. 스톡옵션 남용은 과도한 보상과 불공정을 낳아 국가에도 해롭고, CEO들이 옵션 비용 인식을 막으려 로비하는 것은 부끄러운 일이라고 비판. 버크셔에서는 자본비용을 고려한 옵션 설계만 의미가 있고, 내재가치 이하 행사가격은 부당하다고 봄.
다듬은 글
Were it offered to me as part of my employment, I would rather make my living playing a piano in a wh house. We always get to the good stuff in the afternoon. I hope the children are in bed. I'm not at all against stock options and venture capital, for instance. But the argument that prominent venture capitalists have made that not expensing stock options is appropriate because if you expense them, it would be counting the stock options double.
That's an insane argument. The stock option is both an expense and a delusion and both factors should be taken into account in proper accounting. If you had an accounting rule that said the CEO's salary should not be counted in cash, believe me, the CEOs would be in there fighting to have that rule maintained.
I mean, because no one would they would feel they were going to get more cash uh if it wasn't expensed. And options are the same way. It's a another argument I get a kick out of. I was just reading it the other day where they say, "Well, options are too tough to value." Well, I've answered that in various forms, but I noticed that what is it?
Dell computer, you know, is has a great number of put options out and it's going to cost them a lot of money on the on the put options they have out. uh and for a company to say we can't figure out the value of options and therefore we can't expense them and then at the same time being dealing in billions of dollars worth of options they are saying we are out buying or selling options in the billions of dollars but we don't know how to value these things uh that strikes me as a little bit specious uh a little disconnected cognitive dissonance dissonance as they say I think if you talk generally about stock option plans in America you see a lot of terrible behavior caused and no doubt they do a lot of good at other places but whether they do more good than harm overall uh I wouldn't know I think in particular if you have a corporation where a man has risen to be CEO and he now has hundreds of millions of dollars in the stock of the company he's been loyal to the And the company's been loyal to him for decades.
And he has his directors vote him a great stock option annually to preserve his loyalty to the company and his enthusiasm for the business when he's already old. I think it's demented. How about when they grant options as he leaves the company? I also think it's immoral. I think that that there comes a time when when And I don't think you would improve the behavior of the surgeons at the Mayo Clinic or the partners of Cassath Wayne and Moore if you gave the top people stock options in their 60s.
I mean by that time you ought to have settled loyalties and uh and you ought to be thinking more about the right example for the company than whether you take another hundred million for yourself. Yeah. Well, we had a case. We've inherited some option plans because companies we merged with had them and and uh some cases they got settled for cash at the time.
Some cases they continued on depending on the situation. But more money has been made from options at Bergkshire by accident. and that you know this is not it just happened that way but more money was made by people that had options on general reto stock during a period when general re contributed to a de decrease in value of berkshire so we had all of the other managers essentially uh um in in great many cases turning in fine results and we had a bad result at general re and yet more money by a significant margin was made under options at general re than has been made probably by all other entities combined.
But it was an accident. But that's the point. It it leads it can lead to extremely capriccious uh compensation arrange uh compensation results that have no bearing on the performance of the people uh in some cases get great benefits and other in other cases people did great jobs and were their efforts were negated by results elsewhere.
So it's it uh it would be very capriccious at Bergkshire, you can argue that at Bergkshire uh for those that succeed me and Charlie that anybody that is in the very top position at Bergkshire has got the job of allocating resources for the whole place. There could be a logically constructed option plan for that person and it would make some sense because they are responsible for what takes place overall.
But a logically constructed plan would have a cost of capital built into it for every year. We don't pay out any dividends. So why should we get money from you free? We could put it in a savings account and it would grow in value without us doing anything. And a fixed price option over 10 years would acrue dramatic value to to whoever is was running the place if they had a large option uh for putting the money in a savings account or in government bonds.
So there has to be a cost of capital factor in to make options equitable in my view that there can be cases where they make sense. They should not be granted at below the intrinsic value of the company. I mean the market a CEO who says you know my stock is ridiculously low when a merger when somebody comes around and wants to buy the company but then grants himself an option at a price that he's just gotten through saying is ridiculously low.
That that bothers me. So if somebody is says, you know, I wouldn't we don't want to sell this company for less than $30 this year because it's going to be worth a lot more later on. You know, my notion is that the option should be at $30 even if the stock is 15. Um, you know, otherwise you have a an actually a premium built in uh for having a low stock price in relation to value.
And uh I've never gotten too excited about that. Charlie, do you have any further thoughts on options? Well, we've been we're so different from the rest of uh corporate America on this subject that you know we can sound like a couple of Johnny one notes. Um but I don't think we ever quite tire of the subject.
A lot is horribly wrong in corporate compensation in America. And the system of using stock options on the theory they really don't cost anything has contributed to a lot of gross excess. And that excess is not good for the country. You know, Aristotle said that systems work better when people look at the different outcomes and basically appraise them as fair.
And when large percentages of people look at corporate compensation practices and think of them as unfair, uh it's not good for the country. It will be it will be hard to change though because basically the corporate CEOs have their hands on a hands on the switch. I mean they control the process. You can have comp committees and all of that, but as a practical matter, I've been on 19 public boards.
Charlie's been on a lot of them. And and in the end, the CEOs tend to get pretty much what they want, and what they want tends to go up every year because they see other people getting more every year. And there's a ratcheting effect, and the consultants fan the flames and and it's it's very difficult to get change.
And right now you've got corporate CEOs descending upon Washington uh doing everything from trying to persuade to threaten your elected representatives to not have options expensed and uh it's I think it's kind of shameful actually because it you know that that this group who was who is getting fed very well under the system does not want to have those uh what clearly is a compensation expense recorded because they know they won't get as much.
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