Shareholders Can’t Afford Retirement, as Martha Stewart Seeks Fountain of Youth

She has the help and she has her health. If she makes it to 100, Stewart will never outlive the permanent place she has earned in the “Shareholder Hall of Shame” due to the endless disappointment that her company has been to its stockholders.

Stewart is a master of misdirection. She assumes that if she spends enough time in the public eye with her own image as the model for entertaining, home decorating and gardening, then no one will notice that the company she founded to house her media properties has fallen into terrible disrepair. Aside from her new book, most recently she was on the front pages of most American media because she wants a mate. One of the ways she means to find one is through a posting on dating site Match.com. Who would the lucky man be? According to the Washington Post: “Someone who’s intelligent, established, and curious; and who relishes adventure and new experiences as much as I do. Someone who can teach me new things. A lover of animals, grandchildren, and the outdoors. Young at heart.”

Stewart is as rich as she is beautiful … and tasteful. Buried in a recent SEC filing was the fact that Martha Stewart Omnimedia paid its founder $5,460,406 in 2012, and somewhat more in 2011 and 2010. Her new beau, if she finds one, can enjoy, among other things, the “$127,955 she is paid for a weekend driver and a portion of the cost of a weekly driver for non-business usage” and be kept out of harm’s way due to the $642,128 the company pays for security services. If money can buy a long life, she did not put this fact in her new book.

Public company leaders who are also public figures can become distracted, just as they can distract shareholders from their performances as people who owe shareholders their best efforts. Stewart, famous on her own, has largely stayed out of the harsh light of the performance of the company she founded. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has lost money each of the past five years — more than $111 million in all — as revenue has fallen from $284.3 million in 2008 to $197.6 million. Figures for the first quarter of this year showed that the downward spiral has continued. Revenue fell from $49.8 million last year to $37.2 million. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia lost $3.3 million for the period.

Live long and prosper, Martha Stewart. Many of your shareholders are already done for.