Eric Benhamou, chairman of 3Com and Palm, said that the technology
industry has more than just poor sales to cope with - it also has
to improve a very bad reputation.
Speaking at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition (ETRE
2002) in Seville, Benhamou said: "When the bubble burst, it wasn't
just the stock market that was hit. It distorted the value of
businesses, and some greedy people tried to take advantage of
that."
However, legislation passed in an attempt to prevent further
financial scandals "has gone to extremes it didn't have to. These
new rules will affect the way business is run", Benhamou said.
Chief executive officers and chief financial officers now have to
certify their results are accurate. "The idea of going to prison
tends to stiffens backs and so you take that signature very
seriously," he said. That was not a bad thing, he added, but it put
chief executive officers under enormous pressure.
"I wouldn't be the chief executive officer of a large public
company again. It's going to be a hard, unrewarding job for the
next few years and I don't think the risk-reward ratio is balanced
for me now," Benhamou said.
If the industry can go six months without another big fraud case,
it can start to get on with business, Benhamou said. "This gives
the entire industry a bad name. You can't do business if people
don't trust you. So the first step to recovery is cleaning up the
fraud."