The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

2004: An Odyssey Health Odyssey DOJ on the way

1. I'm Just Thinking of an Unrelated Thing

Employees sometimes find it hard to drag themselves into the office Monday morning. This week, though, it was a little harder than usual for one executive at Odyssey HealthCare (ODSY Quote).

On Monday, the hospice operator issued a classic bad-news press release. It said third-quarter results would come below analysts' expectations. It lowered guidance for the year. And it announced that David Gasmire -- president since 2001 and CEO since January -- had decided to leave the company.

Odyssey's shares dropped 47% in a single day.

Oh, yeah -- there was another piece of bad news. "In an unrelated announcement," as the company put it deep down in its Monday morning press release, Odyssey disclosed that the Justice Department had begun an investigation under the False Claims Act. The probe covers payment claims submitted to the government since 2000 as well as patient admissions, patient retention and billing practices.

That's an "unrelated announcement"? You know, from the outside looking in, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder whether Gasmire's departure had just a little something to do with the DOJ warning. But Odyssey says no. The DOJ's move "is totally unrelated to any management change here," Chairman Dick Burnham told analysts Monday.

Maybe he's right. Maybe the DOJ thing played no role in Gasmire's wanting to leave. On the other hand, we can't imagine it was something he wanted to stick around for, either.

2. Not Bad for a Day's Work

The big news at Kmart (KMRT Quote) this week was that President and CEO Julian Day resigned Monday.

Actually, the really big news was the going-away package that Day received after his two and a half years as president of the discount retailer chain: options worth as much as $120 million, The Wall Street Journal estimates. ...