Carnival Corp pleaded guilty to violation

[sppunk]

$20m is a joke of a penalty. They should have been hot much harder - they were fined $40m previously and didn’t lean the lesson. 

[rkacruiser]

chengkp75,

 

May I wave the white flag of surrender?  You seem to have the documents and expertise that I lack as a small investor.  I will maintain my belief that there are too many levels of "experts" that are anything other than that.  Their interest is maintaining their jobs.  To H%@L with the guest experience or any benefit for the Corporation.

 

What is a small investor to do?  Futile, I know, but when the Annual Shareholders Meetings are held, attendance and speaking at such is possible.  (I know; I witnessed such at past CCL and the former Anheuser-Busch Company Annual Meetings.)  Voting opposite to all of the issues on the Proxy Ballot to what the Board of Directors recommend sends a message if enough do so.  (I have done so in 2019 with my holdings in Boeing and General Motors.)  Is it time for me to do so in 2020 for CCL?  It's been a few years since I attended a CCL Annual Meeting.  I think in 2020 it will be in the United States.  I may plan my travels in order to plan to attend, if possible.

[chengkp75]

10 hours ago, rkacruiser said:

chengkp75,

 

May I wave the white flag of surrender?  You seem to have the documents and expertise that I lack as a small investor.  I will maintain my belief that there are too many levels of "experts" that are anything other than that.  Their interest is maintaining their jobs.  To H%@L with the guest experience or any benefit for the Corporation.

 

What is a small investor to do?  Futile, I know, but when the Annual Shareholders Meetings are held, attendance and speaking at such is possible.  (I know; I witnessed such at past CCL and the former Anheuser-Busch Company Annual Meetings.)  Voting opposite to all of the issues on the Proxy Ballot to what the Board of Directors recommend sends a message if enough do so.  (I have done so in 2019 with my holdings in Boeing and General Motors.)  Is it time for me to do so in 2020 for CCL?  It's been a few years since I attended a CCL Annual Meeting.  I think in 2020 it will be in the United States.  I may plan my travels in order to plan to attend, if possible.

No worries.  You may want to read the comments made by both judges at Monday's hearings, where the blame was placed squarely on the assembled board members, CEO, and presidents and senior vice-presidents from all Carnival lines.  Remember, if the board and senior management had really cared about compliance, when Princess was fined in 2017, 26 years after her initial fine (fair enough, before it became part of Carnival), and 15 years after Carnival was fined and implemented an ECP, wouldn't these senior people have said, enough is enough, and either made an effort to see whether compliance was being actually implemented, or cleaned house at the mid-managerial level to get compliance, but instead you have continued non-compliance to the tune of 800+ violations in a single year.

[old mike]

The revelations above by Chengkp 75 point to an actively rotting, self-destructive corporate culture that without intervention will only get worse. The environmental performance is but a window onto the whole rotten edifice. It is inevitable that customers and employees well-being will be subject to unacceptable risks, let me re-phrase that, will continue to be exposed to ever escalating risk.

 

I'm sorry to say I've experienced this kind of self destructive culture first hand, the turning point came when three fatal incidents occurred over a short four month period, it took extreme measures and tough decision making to reverse the decrepitude, it had to start at the very top and still thirty years later requires constant attention and renewal.

 

Holding board members and senior executives accountable verbally is one thing, but unless they are made to feel that accountability where it hurts either in their bank accounts or by loss of personal freedom they will continue to rationalize their poor decision making as amply demonstrated by recent performance and they will do whatever they can to isolate themselves from real accountability for operational activities. 

[drowelf]

17 hours ago, rkacruiser said:

Why would a Company--regardless of its size, cash flow, etc.--choose to pay and pay and pay fines when such could be avoided?  Even upper Management would benefit from not having to do so?  It just does not make sense to me.

Its classic risk/cost management. The powers that make these decisions decided that the cost of any fines, if they got caught, was less than the YOY cost of insuring that they did not incur any fines. 

 

I work in an industry that has these issues to deal with all the time. If its going to cost you $1,000,000 to close a potential 1% risk of losing $50,000 in a year, someone in Senior Management has to either accept the risk or authorize the spending of the $$ to close the risk.