alt Hacker NewsI, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected. If you can establish the latter, then his personal conduct is between him and his partner.
What I am extra curious about is why is Alice Huang not being rigorously investigated prior to or alongside all of this? If these allegations are true then what she did amounts to treason and a variety of other things. Failing to register as a foreign agent is another. She, at the very least, should be held by the US the same way we hold other foreign nationals charged with treason.
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> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected.
This is actually a pretty challenging standard, because the moment the CEO tries to gaslight their spouse/partner that it's not an affair, they are already at risk of bringing the company into a deception: working late is almost always the cover, for one thing. But at that moment you have a substantially compromised person as a CEO.
This might seem a silly place to draw the line, but consider what the escalations are — the CEO's PA being asked to mislead the spouse, inventing a meeting they were at, inventing an away trip, etc. etc.; they always mount up. There is no executive who has an affair who doesn't pretend they are at work, and there's no pretence that doesn't ultimately put an employee in a difficult position.
It's entirely reasonable for a board to say that if the CEO or the chairman is having an affair it is their business.
And this is before you even consider that the affair is ordinarily likely to be with an employee.
Now, if a CEO at Huang's level of geopolitical importance is having an affair with anyone, it's the government's business, and the shareholders', because it makes them a (local and international, commercial and state-level) blackmail and espionage target even if they are not literally boffing a spy, which in this case he evidently is.
So yeah, it matters.
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected.
This is really naive. And I bet other people could do other questionable things that you'd consider to color their entire character and render them untrustworthy.
I'm sorry, but how can a Chinese national living in Singapore be charged for treason in US? Doesn't the concept of treason presume some kind of loyalty to the state in question, usually through citizenship?
I, as a shareholder, do care. It isnt about moralism. Sony america lost their ceo because he was banging some 20yo as a perk to sign a contract with another media company and she got mad about it when her side didnt pan out (no acting roles).
It is bad for business. Thats all. Him doing this is bad for Nvidia and bad for shareholders.
You in a few years time: "I can't believe this person who lied and cheated, lied and cheated to ME."
If someone is willing to cheat on their spouse, do you think they'll have any compunction about cheating their employees and shareholders?
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected
There are 100 different ways that the CEO falling victim to an espionage plot could impact the business.