MicroStrategy Founder Saylor Should Be Fired

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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MicroStrategy Founder Saylor Should Be Fired

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MicroStrategy is the latest new-age financial firm to implode. The company, which had sold itself to Wall Street as a major growth story, posted a year-over-year decline in revenue of 3% to $122 million. To make matters worse, the company lost $918 million in the quarter. Almost all the red ink was due to a drop in the value of cryptocurrency held by MicroStrategy.
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In another troubling turn of events, Michael Saylor left his job as chief executive to become executive board chair. Stunningly, President Phong Le became CEO. He was part of the management team that made decisions that destroyed a huge amount of the company’s market capitalization.
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Saylor commented:

As Executive Chairman I will be able to focus more on our bitcoin acquisition strategy and related bitcoin advocacy initiatives, while Phong will be empowered as CEO to manage overall corporate operations.

This is after Saylor entirely missed the change in a market in which he claims to be among the world’s experts.
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If there is only one reason for the board to push Saylor out, it is the performance of the company’s stock. It is down 56% in the past year. There is almost no precedent for the leader of a public company to keep a position at the head of the company under these circumstances.
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One problem with the board is that many members have been in their positions for years. Saylor may not be forced to leave MicroStrategy because of that.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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