Weekend Link Fest

I have just read a few intersting article in the newspaper.

1. New research has found that CEO renumeration packages are not linked to company performance among Canadian companies. This agency relationship is a complicated measure for shareholders and the focus of academic research over the past 20 years. The study compared total compensation paid to CEOs from 2002 to 2004 to companies' total shareholder returns, including both share price appreciation and dividend payments.
They grouped companies according to industry sectors, and measured the excess of their returns compared with their industry average. The study included all public companies that have ranked within the largest 100 companies in Canada for the past 10 years — a total of 65 companies. The sample is small because many companies have disappeared from the top ranks over the years as a result of takeovers or business problems, or have not been publicly traded for at least 10 years.The review found no broad correlation between the amount paid to CEOs and their companies' performance. In other words, companies with higher compensation were not more likely to have better performance, while companies with lower relative pay are not generally the ones with worse performance.

If managment is not inclined to maximise shareholder returns, they will take on the alternative. This will include maximising personal income, or job security, rather than maximising shareprice. Board of directors need to take notice to solve this agency problem with packages that can included stock options or using real options for project valuation.

2. The oldest surviving book in Western civilizations was found in Greece. Greek philosophy expert Apostolos Pierris said the text may be over 2500 years old. “It was probably written by somebody from the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras, in the second half of the 5th century B.C.,” he said. Anaxagoras, who lived in ancient Athens, is thought to have been the teacher of Socrates and was accused by his contemporaries of atheism. Last month, experts from Brigham Young University in Utah used multispectral digital analysis to create enhanced pictures of the text, which will be studied by Oxford University papyrologist Dirk Obbink and Mr. Pierris, and published by the end of 2007.

The scroll contains a philosophical treatise on a lost poem describing the birth of the gods and other beliefs focusing on Orpheus, the mythical musician who visited the underworld to reclaim his dead love and enjoyed a strong cult following in the ancient world. The Orpheus cult raised the notion of a single creator god – as opposed to the multitude of deities the ancient Greeks believed in – and influenced later monotheistic faiths. “In a way, it was a precursor of Christianity,” Mr. Pierris said. “Orphism believed that man's salvation depended on his knowledge of the truth.”

3. Israeli scientists have discovered an ancient ecosystem containing eight previously unknown species in a lake inside a cave, where they were completely sheltered from the outside world for millions of years.
The newly discovered crustaceans and invertebrates were found last month in a cave near the city of Ramle in central Israel, team leader Amos Frumkin announced Thursday.
“This is a very unique ecosystem that is completely isolated from the surface,” said Dr. Frumkin, a cave researcher in the geography department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The cave, located 100 metres below ground in a limestone quarry, includes tunnels that extend about 2.5 kilometres. Inside, a large underground lake holds the previously unknown species, some similar to scorpions and shrimp.