National Employee Morale Day At H&R Block

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Troubled tax return company H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) said today that it would lay-off 400 people. The firm will also close 400 “under-performing” offices. H&R said the moves would save $140 million to $150 million in operating expenses in the next year.

Oddly enough, at the same time, the company said it would pay its former CFO, Becky Shulman, $610,560. That is about the cost of employing 20 people at H&R.

H&R Block is hardly having a tough year. It made $50.6 million in the quarter ending January 31 compared to $47.4 million in the same quarter a year ago.

The company’s CEO is paid like a king. For the 2009 fiscal year, Russell P. Smyth $2,623, 047. The announcement of the layoffs did not include any word about Smyth taking a pay cut.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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