Buffett Fooling Self on PetroChina's Darfur Ties

Stock quotes in this article: PTR  

If westerners shun the stock, you would expect that to drive down the price -- or, at the very least, to leave the price lower than it would otherwise be.

Supply and demand.

And that will hit the top management of PetroChina-CNPC right where it hurts: In the wallet.

The reason?

Compensation for all the top people at PetroChina is heavily dependent on the stock price through "stock appreciation rights." Which means that compensation for a lot of the people running CNPC is heavily dependent on the PetroChina stock price.

In the case of Jiang Jiemin, the CNPC president and general manager, 60% of his annual PetroChina compensation is tied to the PetroChina stock price. For chairman Gen it's 70%. For all those PetroChina VPs involved in running CNPC, it's also 60%. Even for PetroChina's department heads it's 50%.

In total, as many as 300 top people at PetroChina get stock-appreciation rights every year. Put simply: The people running CNPC have leverage over the government of the Sudan. And western investors, through their influence on the PetroChina stock price, actually have some leverage over the people running CNPC.

Like I said, I'm usually skeptical of "divestment" campaigns. But this time around, it's pretty hard to argue with it.

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In keeping with TSC's editorial policy, Brett Arends doesn't own or short individual stocks. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Arends takes a critical look inside mutual funds and the personal finance industry in a twice-weekly column that ranges from investment advice for the general reader to the industry's latest scoop. Prior to joining TheStreet.com in 2006, he worked for more than two years at the Boston Herald, where he revived the paper's well-known 'On State Street' finance column and was part of a team that won two SABEW awards in 2005. He had previously written for the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers in London, the magazine Private Eye, and for Global Agenda, the official magazine of the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland. Arends has also written a book on sports 'futures' betting.




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