Commentary By: Steven Reynolds
It is not often in these times of economic uncertainly that we get a chance to praise a CEO. I am going to take the opporunity now to do just that. Steven Korman is a Philadelphia CEO of Korman Communities, a privately held family firm founded in 1909. Philadelphians know of the former Korman Suites in our downtown, but Korman Communities has evolved over the last twenty years to providing short and long-term housing in several metropolitan areas. The company employs 500.
Steven Korman is featured in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer because he got a bit perturbed the other day while in his daily exercise routine. There on CNBC was another announcement of layoffs. This time it was Pfizer announcing that in order to complete its merger with Wyeth it would first lay off 8,000 workers. Steven Korman owns shares of Pfizer, and he was not pleased with the news, even though it might help Phizer’s bottom line. The Inquirer tells the story better than I:
It was during a morning workout on his treadmill early last week that Steven Korman felt inspired to make a public appeal to business leaders:
Resist layoffs - even if that means smaller profit or a drop in stock prices.
The chief executive of Plymouth Meeting-based Korman Communities was watching Pfizer Inc. chief executive Jeff Kindler on CNBC discussing the drug company’s planned $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth.
Korman, who owns Pfizer stock, grew peeved when Kindler said Pfizer would eliminate 8,000 jobs before the merger. If such cost-cutting news was welcomed by Pfizer shareholders, Korman did not share their glee.
By week’s end, he had placed $16,000 in ads in the business sections of The Inquirer and the New York Times urging CEOs to “please keep your employees working.”
“I have listened to the executives of many companies say that they are eliminating thousands of jobs to ‘improve the bottom line,’ ” Korman’s ad said. “I own stock in many of these companies and would prefer that the company make a smaller profit and [that] the stock fall, in the short term, rather than affect the lives of our neighbors and their families as jobs are lost.
“Please join me in reminding all CEOs that we are not just dealing with numbers and profit, but with real people and real families who need to keep their jobs.”
He’s not done.
Today, Korman is sending by Federal Express similarly themed letters to Kindler and the chief executives of 16 other corporations whose stock he owns. Those companies are Exxon Mobil, Apple, Google, Cisco Systems, Caterpillar, General Electric, Kraft, Nokia, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, EMC, Chevron, DuPont, Coca-Cola, Oracle and Dow.
“I just want them to stop for a second and think,” Korman said yesterday during an interview at one of his company’s short-term-housing properties just off Rittenhouse Square.
There you go, a fine corporate citizen, a man who runs a company and shows his care for his employees with more than just lip service. No, Korman is not a bleeding heart liberal. FEC data shows he has contributed to both Arlen Spector and the Democratic Party. Steven Korman is a throwback, I suppose, to a time when family-run businesses took care of their larger families, their employees. Sure, Steven Korman is philanthropic, but this action shows far more care for people suffering in today’s difficult economic climate. Korman Communities under Steven Korman’s leadership show themselves to be fine corporate citizens. I applaud that, as should we all.
In the interest of full disclosure I walk by a couple Korman buildings nearly every day. Further, my son Jack received some lovely baby gifts from a Korman a couple weeks ago, though a distant relations to the Kormans involved in Korman Communities. I have never met Steven Korman, though I would be honored to do so.
