https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Want to lose another Canadian head office? Easy! Hire a non-Canadian CEO. Canadian boards of directors seem to have a fascination with foreign chief executive officers. Canada is (largely) an open economy, one with pretenses to corporate greatness, so why not pick the best and the brightest from the United States, Europe and elsewhere?
Load them up with fat salaries and share option packages, and watch them create a Niagara of shareholder value. And a flag-waving Canadian business champion as a bonus.
Canada and a few other countries that worship at the altar of shareholder value, Britain among them, have bought into the cult of the globalist CEO – big time. But the cult is wearing thin.
Exhibit A is a certain Doug Suttles, a good ol’ boy from Texas who bounced around BP (the former British Petroleum) for a long while before landing at Encana in Calgary in 2013. Encana is one of Canada’s biggest natural gas producers and its roots go back to the formation of the Canadian Pacific Railway at the end of the 19th century. The company, whose name is a portmanteau of “energy” and “Canada,” was one of our proudest corporate sons.
Two problems. The first is that Mr. Suttles apparently developed a severe case of homesickness not long after he endured a couple of Calgary winters. In early 2018, he hit the road, choosing to work out of Denver, the home of Encana’s U.S. office.
For the rest of this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-beware-foreign-ceos-sometimes-they-just-want-to-go-home/