Epam retrospective analysis makes a valuable lesson to how public company governance can make or destroy itself.
Back in 2014, when first Russian/Ukranian crisis broke off with Crimea annexation, CEO and management had made a decision to take advantage of such situation. With deliberate decision to exploit local currencies plunge, increase hiring velocity in corresponding locations, this risk-careless “management“ let grow head-counts 200% in next 7 years.
By the time the war began, this reckless decision pushed the entire company on the brink of collapse. The next 5 years was a total chaos with idle speed performance.
Overall the stock lost 80% of its face value, if to adjust to inflation-90%, if adjust to benchmark s&p 500 growth -97%
Tremendous amount of cash was burn out to ashes
Despite all of this clingy and quite o-l-d management for such industry, stays intact, holds all investors hostage of their willpower. The board Ceo Dobkin just serve his say.
He also blind sighted AI revolution being busy relocating people around the world and convincing everyone that we will be O.K.
Now the question is why investors keep suffering from such ego-centered, 66 yo CEO? They lost a lit of money, do they perf their fiduciary responsibility? Or maybe it is an invisible game against retail investor? What is the point of having idle speed performance public company being listed of NYSE acting as a private one?