I worked at a ~$20M food company where we had a new CEO coming in. Management/Board were over the moon, saying "This guy has been running a multi-billion $$ company for years."
Curious as to why someone would transition so abruptly from the major leagues to the minors, I searched on his name and the first hits were about an active SEC investigation into him for witholding payments to suppliers (small and medium farmers) to inflate the balance sheets to give it a higher valuation for a buyout. He actually turned out to be more effective than the previous 2 CEOs and I forged a perfectly fine working relationship with him, but it made me aware that business people will ignore any variety of moral/legal issues when the dollar signs are in their eyes.
I believe he put the SEC thing behind him, avoiding jail time by not quite admitting nor denying guilt and writing a ~$2M personal check.
Curious as to why someone would transition so abruptly from the major leagues to the minors, I searched on his name and the first hits were about an active SEC investigation into him for witholding payments to suppliers (small and medium farmers) to inflate the balance sheets to give it a higher valuation for a buyout. He actually turned out to be more effective than the previous 2 CEOs and I forged a perfectly fine working relationship with him, but it made me aware that business people will ignore any variety of moral/legal issues when the dollar signs are in their eyes.
I believe he put the SEC thing behind him, avoiding jail time by not quite admitting nor denying guilt and writing a ~$2M personal check.