Plea to RadioShack: please come home

Remember the plaintive cry from that movie by Stephen Spielberg?

“ET, phone home.”

With all apologies to Mr. Spielberg, we have a Fort Worth adaptation.

“RadioShack, come home.”

The company once known under the umbrella name of Tandy Corp. was built by the men and women who worked under the local business pioneer Charles Tandy and, later, John V. Roach.

Some local investors grumbled about the stock price from time to time — but they never questioned the company’s ties to its roots, and to the traditions of Fort Worth.

It behaved like a locally owned company, even though the majority of its investors lived outside the city and more stores lay beyond our city limits than within.

Those leaders met questions and criticisms head-on, out in the open.

Tandy and RadioShack were synonymous with charitable contributions locally.

And Tandy and Roach made sure that Fort Worth had loyal representation on the board of directors.

During the past two weeks, while CEO Dave Edmondson has found himself forced to resign after admitting he had lied about his college education — and faced scrutiny about charges of driving under the influence — the company and its executives have behaved with arrogance and a lack of openness. This attitude does a great disservice to the legacy of RadioShack as a local corporate leader.

Upon EdmondsonÂ’s resignation, Claire Babrowski was named as interim successor. But when this announcement came from Len Roberts, former CEO and now executive chairman, Babrowski was nowhere to be heard or seen.

Roberts, who had proclaimed just over a year ago that Edmondson was the obvious choice to succeed him, was all of a sudden tight-lipped. (Overall, the public-relations work at RadioShack has been abysmal, almost non-existent.)

Edmondson’s fate is tinged with corporate tragedy. He had risen at a youthful age, from virtually nowhere, to become the leader of a large public company. And he was undone by fibbing on his résumé and what appears to be an alcohol problem.

Somewhere in some afterlife, old Charles Tandy must be laughing about that latter concern. He was known to party hard and late, taking a nip here and there himself, with all due discretion.

But Tandy and his successor, John Roach, maintained high and benevolent profiles as working executives within the community. They did not hide from the public or the press. They would never have ducked sensitive issues about corporate dealings. And they made certain that their company was generous to a fault in corporate giving.

Such directness and generosity cut them a lot of slack here in Fort Worth.

RadioShack has many problems, such as a recently reported 62 percent decline in earnings for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2005, and outdated stores overburdened with merchandise that nobody wants to buy. The company has announced the closing of as many as 700 stores nationwide.

But while they fix those global problems, their executives need to re-establish ties with the community. They must be loved at home in order to find respect outside Tarrant County.

Claire Babrowski can help her image and that of the company by becoming highly visible and available. She needs to revamp the companyÂ’s public-relations and communications efforts. She needs to acquaint herself with the way Johnson & Johnson handled a potential debacle with the tainted-Tylenol scare.

And she needs to suggest the addition of at least one more local leader to the board. Currently Dan Feehan of Cash America, an able executive, and Roberts are the only Fort Worth members. In times past, the board included the likes of Bill Tucker, former chancellor of Texas Christian University; and James Cash, a local sports legend in high school and at TCU, who once directed the Harvard Business School.

RadioShack needs to come home.

 

Math depletes take-away for ousted RadioShacker

OK, now — how’s your math?

The corporate quiz goes like this: How does the $975,000 given as severance to Dave Edmondson, ousted CEO of RadioShack, dwindle as he contemplates his next career?

Well, now, the government will probably take a cut of 38 percent in taxes, which takes a bite of $370,500 — leaving Edmondson with $604,500.

Still not chump change, right?

But then Â…

Edmondson and his wife have each filed for divorce from one another, so we need to cut that in half — leaving him with $302,250.

But then again Â…

The lawyers. There are always lawyers, expensive lawyers.

They could easily take half of that. And if they should do so, he would be left with $151,125.

Then, one must deduct the cost of a driver, whom he says he employs while facing a DWI charge. And then there are the other day-to-day costs that come with the territory for a man who had made about $1.4 million in salary and bonuses in 2004.

A million dollars just ainÂ’t what it used to be.

 

The legacy of Tommy Taylor

Fort Worth’s financial community is rich in many ways. This past week, it became tragically poorer upon the death of Thomas “Tommy” Taylor.

Taylor died in a snowmobile accident in New YorkÂ’s Adirondacks.

A graduate of Paschal High School and Texas Christian University, Taylor spent many years as the mastermind of a trading room and investment company for the Bass family. Colleagues remember him as stock trader with uncanny skills and a brilliant mind, particularly for numbers.

He left his Fort Worth company and started several investment funds in Connecticut, eventually opening a Dallas office. He and his wife, Linda — critically injured in the accident — were active socially and performed many philanthropic deeds.

The story behind the story is also about one of TaylorÂ’s mentors, Sid R. Bass, and the Bass family itself. The Basses gave Taylor his opportunity, and he capitalized upon it. They allowed him the freedom to learn and to share in the wealth he had helped to create. He, in turn, trained many young investment executives who have gone on to start their own investment funds and companies.

Fort Worth and Dallas are now home to the companies that Taylor’s protégés started. Those young men and women also have become successful money managers, creating wealth for the sharing. They, too, have followed the tradition of giving back to the community.

We believe that one of the great American business stories would be to draw a family tree of sorts — one with the Basses at the base, the roots, and the limbs, showing all the significant careers that the family has spawned and nurtured.

The eulogies, mourning the passing of Tommy Taylor and praising his financial gifts, have provided a glimpse of how widespread the generosity of the Basses has been — not just in dollars and cents, but also in the development of human capital.

Tommy TaylorÂ’s death is a saddening development. But in the story of his career, there are many layers of uplifting instruction about his legacy, and that of the Bass family, in the strengthening of the fabric of life that enriches Fort Worth.