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发表于 2012-1-19 00:44
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来自： 中国上海
谢谢各位的支持批评和指正，我只是看不过该ABS的HR乱咬人而出言反驳，算是沉默中的爆发。其实加班也好，不加班也好，都没什么，各有各的活法，怕就怕是变相的逼大家免费加班。这次事件的个中缘由明眼人都能看的明白。ABS在形势好的时候为了适应扩张的市场招了太多人，现在市场不好没有这么多的活让大家做。只能请一部分人走人，但是怎么“请”法是有讲究的。当初GL是裁员，这个是要花大笔钱的。ABS现在二鬼子和汉奸多，这些人都了解国情，出的招就更阴了，降低待遇，谁受不了谁走人啊。你自己辞职，ABS是不用付一分钱的。如果有人在帖子里说，“你不接受你走人啊”，那么这个人的心思和来路也就不言自明。让我们好好利用龙船这个平台进行信息共享和交流，一起努力来提升中国人在ABS以及其他所有国外船级社的作用和地位。先转载一篇发表于2006年7月11日的Lloyds List上的旧新闻，外部的人对这则新闻可能没有留意过，不过当时这篇新闻出来的时候，ABS内部的员工一片哗然。这则新闻至今能在网上查到，大家可去搜索。我希望能通过这篇文章从而引出我这几天整理后的一些想法。
Mystery deepens in ABS’ Prestige battle
---Spain has failed to get a New York judge to compel ABS to release financial records of its executive retirement plan. However, a management shake-up at ABS after the apparent suicide of its chief financial officer has thrown the spotlight back on the class society. Does the Prestige fit into all this? Rajesh Joshi sifts through the facts- Tuesday July 11 2006
SPAIN’S $1bn Prestigelegal tussle against American Bureau of Shipping has become murkier, try as the observer may to shrug off the fog.
Spain’s aggressive legal team under Holland & Knight’s Brian Starer recently failed to persuade Judge Ronald Ellis of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to compel ABS to release paperwork detailing its Supplemental Executive Retirement Plan.
Spain’s petition had contended that this case is similar to New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer’s lawsuit against Richard Grasso, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, where Mr Spitzer alleged that Mr Grasso’s compensation was unreasonable under New York’s corporation law.
Spain also sought to establish that Mercer, the company that prepared a report supporting ABS’ retirement plan, is the same company that certified Mr Grasso’s retirement plan payments.
None of these arguments held water with Judge Ellis, whose June 7 rejection restricted Spain’s discovery to design and construction issues of the Prestige, keeping financial information off-limits.
However, ABS’ own announcement two weeks later of a sweeping management reshuffle that is six months away added an ironically tantalising whiff to Spain’s allegations.
Mr Starer’s case is built on a deposition he took from ABS chairman and chief executive Robert Somerville in March this year.
Mr Somerville reveals that in order to get around US federal caps on pensionable salary for executives employed by not-for-profit organisations such as ABS the class society’s board created a programme under which “daily cash revenues” would bankroll a retirement payment to an eligible executive the year he reached the age of 62.
ABS computes the retirement plan payment based on the excess of the executive’s pay over the federally mandated cap for non-profits, Mr Somerville says. Payment is mandatory once the executive attains the age of 62.
In his own case, this age being reached in 2005, he took $3.8m under the retirement plan that year in addition to $1m salary and bonus, bringing the year’s total remuneration to $4.8m.
Mr Somerville reveals that to his knowledge at least five other ABS executives were entitled to retirement plan payments, of whom four had already cashed out their retirement plan payments after they turned 62.
This quartet includes Frank Iarossi, former chairman and chief executive who was at the helm when the Prestige casualty took place, Admiral Robert Kramek, who is to retire as president and chief operating officer at the end of the year, Vincent Roth, who is also to retire as senior vice president and chief of staff in December, and Donald Liu, the former executive vice-president and chief technology officer.
The amounts this quartet took home will not be known at present following Judge Ellis’ denial of Spain’s discovery request.
Robert Bauerle, chief financial officer, was the sixth man including Mr Somerville on the list of retirement plan recipients but was not 62 and therefore had not received his payout.
According to the Houston Chronicle newspaper, Mr Bauerle died in a car crash in May after apparently being missing for a week.
In effect, therefore, almost every retirement plan beneficiary who was in ABS top management when the Prestige calamity rocked the society is now retired, close to retiring or dead.
Whether Mr Kramek’s anointed replacement Christopher Wiernicki and the US Coast Guard’s newly retired Admiral Thomas Gilmour, appointed ABS Americas president from next January, are eligible for the retirement plan or aware of the programme is a question being asked by people familiar with the case.
The market is also wondering why ABS was in such a hurry to announce a reshuffle that is six months away when there was more curiosity about Mr Bauerle’s replacement, who remains unknown as yet.
Mr Somerville’s pay packet is also being juxtaposed with ABS’ standing as a non-profit-making organisation.
Dennis Bryant, Holland & Knight senior counsel based in Washington, tells Lloyd’s List: “From the outset ABS’ defence in the Prestige case has been that it should not be made to pay damages because as a non-profit organisation it does not have the wherewithal.
“After spending so much time painting itself as a ‘poor little class society’, how is ABS now going to explain the compensation received by its chairman and chief executive?”
Spain’s formal effort to compel ABS to release its retirement plan documents twists the dagger much deeper.
Spain makes two main contentions — that ABS’ funnelling of cash to the plan starved the society of resources with which to hire and train surveyors and that the society’s shift to an overtly profit-driven business has undermined its acknowledged responsibility to the public as a class society.
In the amended complaint of July, 2004, in which Spain increased the damages sought from $750m to $1bn and included ABS’ for-profit consulting subsidiary as co-defendant, Spain states: “At some point in the late 1980s the officers and directors of ABS made an internal strategic business decision to [undertake] for-profit enterprises for their personal gain under the guise of a traditional, independent and objective classification society.”
Mr Starer tells Lloyd’s List, in an oblique reference to former chairman Frank Iarossi’s corporate roots: “If Mr Iarossi came to ABS to do good, he did very well.”
The chilling result of this strategic shift, Spain alleges, is a fateful under-investment in critical manpower.
Spain states: “ ublicly, ABS has long claimed that as a not-for-profit organisation its mission is to promote the security of life, property at sea and protection of the natural environment.
“ABS allegedly does this by setting design standards, including ABS rules for survey of structural conditions throughout the life of vessels. [This] requires a substantial investment by ABS.
“ABS surveyors are the first line of protection charged with assuring vessels are compliant with ABS rules. ABS management must decide whether to invest limited financial resources in executive pay or to invest in hiring and training new surveyors.”
The Prestige tragedy is directly a function of ABS management opting for the former at the expense of the latter, Spain alleges.
ABS did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
The Prestige, a 25-year-old single hull oil tanker laden with nearly 77,000 tonnes of heavy oil, sank 130 miles off Spain’s northwest coast in November, 2002.
Separately, the Prestigelawsuit is far from over. ABS has already replied to Spain’s amended complaint, witheringly rejecting all charges.
ABS’ affirmative defences include an attempt to highlight Spain’s own alleged culpability in refusing the Prestige a place of refuge, something Spain has brushed aside citing its “absolute and sovereign right” to turn away any ship it wants to.
Furthermore, in a creative legal manoeuvre that has caught the attention of legal experts, ABS is invoking the Civil Liability Convention in demanding that the only forum for litigation ought to be Spain, and that ABS itself should be allowed to avail itself of convention limits as a shipowner would.
Spain, for its part, has demanded a trial. If it happens, it will take at least until the summer of next year to begin.
Pending the disposal of such weighty matters, the spotlight for now remains on ABS and its top brass — both outgoing and incoming.
Source: www.lloydslist.com |
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楼主: 熵焓
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发表于 2012-1-19 10:42
来自： 中国上海
