The Best Disinfectant

The phone rang at 6:00 a.m. to tell me that my monthly appearance on CNBC to discuss our "CEO See-Ya" column had been postponed, thanks to the breaking news that Disney CEO Michael Eisner's long awaited successor would be Robert Iger. I've got to admit i was pretty happy at first; that meant an extra 90 minutes of zzzzs.

But I did have plenty to say about this month's candidate, Calpine CEO Peter Cartwright (access code required). One of the things I intended to mention was the fact that shareholders had passed two resolutions in 2003 by a wide margin--a proposal to remove the company's poison pill and one to declassify the board of directors. It's rare indeed for shareholders to actually get a proposal passed. Even rarer still is what Calpine did; it totally ignored the shareholders' will, refusing to make any changes... until this very morning.

At 3:30 a.m. today, Calpine issued a press release announcing it would be both revoking the poison pill and declassifying the board. I was scheduled to appear on CNBC at 7:25 and the Calpine executives had been informed that that was coming. Coincidence? You tell me. Maybe now they'll make Cartwright return his $2.25 million bonus in 2003.