Focus on Home Depot as a Value Play

The corporate watchdogs are howling about another excessive pay package for an executive who has delivered shoddy stock returns. The executive under fire counters by pointing to his superior performance by any fundamental metric.

Could this be the time for a value-minded investor to swoop in and exploit the disconnect?

Forget for a moment all of the questions being raised about how the compensation committee on Home Depot's (HD Quote) board of directors arrived at Chairman and CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation package, from which he gleaned $245 million over his five years with the company even as the stock dropped 12%.

Forget, too, the symbolic slap in the face Home Depot gave its shareholders when no members of its board aside from the chairman showed up to face them at its recent annual meeting, and that Nardelli gave short shrift to the concerns of the people he works for. ...