Dell Needs to Cough Up a Dividend

Updated from 1:59 p.m. EST

SAN FRANCISCO -- As Dell(DELL Quote) shares retreat Friday amid a sea of tech-stock red, shareholders could begin to wonder what it will take to get significant value out of the company -- short of having their own sweet executive sendoff package, that is.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday, the computer maker announced that Michael Cannon, its president of global operations, would be leaving the company on Jan. 31 but staying on for two years as a consultant. Cannon will be paid $10 million in cash under the severance agreement, with an additional $1.5 million coming his way for the consultancy gig.

In addition, Dell said Chief Marketing Officer Mark Jarvis also will exit later this month, taking with him the standard severance payout of a year's worth of base salary (Yahoo! Finance listed this as $606,000) and his target bonus.

OK, we're all capitalist adults here. It's no earth-shattering revelation that executives at major public companies receive more compensation in a year than most workers in the world will earn in their lifetime.

And, truth be told, we're evidently fine with that -- it's the cost of doing business, and don't we all want the companies in our portfolio to seek out the best available talent at whatever the going rate happens to be?

On the other hand, the payouts make it a touch more troubling that longtime Dell shareholders, who have experienced the stock performance illustrated below over the past five years, have been left to settle into wait-for-turnaround mode.

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