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June 11, 2008

Largest Personality Premiums in Public Companies

Nattering about Steve Jobs' health, as well as a WSJ story this morning about the cult of personality that grew up around Broadcom's Henry Nicholas, got me thinking about personality premiums at public companies. What U.S. public companies have the largest share price premiums attached to their current CEOs? In other words, which companies would see the largest share price declines were their CEOs to be incapacitated, hit by a bus, abducted by someone from Betelgeuse, etc.?

Some candidates:

• Steve Jobs. Apple's CEO is the heart and soul of the story at Apple. That company has to be near the top of the list of PP (Personality Premium) stocks.
• Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway's main man likely doesn't have the premium he did a few years ago, but it's still outsized. A transition is coming, and has been long-discussed, but the stock could easily decline on a change.

Anyone have suggestions for other CEOs with positive premiums? Let's leave aside the CEOs with negative premiums for now. We can beat up on them later.

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