Recently 24/7 Wall St. ran a list of CEOs who may need to go back to business school. The performance of their companies has been so poor that they need a period of re-education, some tutoring in the basics.

The 24/7 list included the heads of AMD (NYSE: AMD), Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX), McClatchy (NYSE: MNI), Level 3 (NASDAQ: LVLT), Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS). None of them have done shareholders any favors even if stock price is the only measurement.

But, it is time to add a few more names to the list.

Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX): These shares are now off to $22.49, near a 52-week low. The shares have a period high of $37.14. James Donald has the CEO job at Starbucks, but the founder Howard Schultz is still around. Wall Street could certainly argue that the company has made a lot of mistakes starting with overbuilding stores in the US. Another is that the new menus in the stores seem to be have been decided by random. If the company cannot improve same-store sales soon, the stock will go lower. This seems basic, but SBUX has not given shareholders any plan for addressing it.

Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI): It is hard to have blown the lead that Blockbuster had in movie distribution. But it did. CEO James Keyes does not seem to have any logical vision about how to solve the company's problem, which is that digital distribution has passed it by. He argues that customers will go to kiosks at Blockbuster stores to download movies. Instead of doing it at home on the internet? Or getting the DVD in the mail? Not much of a plan.

Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD): The name on the CEO's door at Sears is Aylwin Lewis. But Eddie Lampert is the chief. The marriage of K-Mart and Sears has been a disaster. Same-store sales at both companies run below the industry average. It would be very hard to argue that the merchandising programs at the retail outlets is compelling enough to bring in new customers. Lampert exhibited poor judgment in sending out a letter that was picked up by the press. His defense of the company was that it had reduced debt and bought back shares. That will help a lot when his stores are empty.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

CEOs who need to go back to business school originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Sears (SHLD) gets beat up after posting 99% drop in net income

Sears (SHLD) gets beat up after posting 99% drop in net income originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.