Shortsighted Cisco coverage

Marek Fuchs, the Business Press Maven for TheStreet.com, criticizes the recent coverage of Cisco, which named CEO John Chambers to the additional role of chairman of the board.

Fuchs notes that in the corporate world recently many companies have been separating the two titles between two different executives. But this wasn’t mentioned in the Cisco coverage, which to Fuchs is shortsighted.

Fuchs wrote, “‘The risk for Cisco is that if the company doesn’t promote from within it may lose some of its key talent,’ the Journal said, in a line that gets a booby prize feared in newsrooms the worldwide — a Business Press Maven ‘Back of the Hand’ award.

“Maybe the Journal and others were distracted by the share buyback, announced simultaneously. Or the unexpected recent death of L-3 Communications’ CEO Frank Lanza, which is making succession planning more of a fad than power balancing.

“But the risk to Cisco is not in losing a Chambers’ lackey who may or many not succeed Chambers when the 56 year-old is old and grey a generation from now. The risk to Cisco is in having too much power concentrated in a man who hasn’t budged his stock price since the Seinfeld years.”

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