• Four years ago, Bob McDonald declared himself “honored” to be succeeded by A.G. Lafley as chief executive of Procter & Gamble Co. (PG). McDonald called Lafley “one of the greatest CEOs in P&G history.”

    In the same December 2009 press release, Lafley said, “I am retiring with confidence in Bob McDonald and his team. This is the right time to complete our management transition.”

    Or, maybe it wasn’t. McDonald no doubt felt less honored to be succeeded this week by Lafley, who was asked by the board of the Cincinnati-based consumer-goods empire to resume the CEO role after McDonald’s abrupt decision to retire.

    Under McDonald, P&G’s profit margins, market share and stock price lagged relative to peers such as Unilever PLC (UL), Colgate-Palmolive Co. (CL) and Clorox Inc. (CLX).

    Critics in the investment community have blamed McDonald for allowing lower-priced competitors to win market share from such gilded P&G brands as Tide detergent and Pampers diapers, and for being slow to capitalize

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  • Corporate America is in the midst of an obsession with "shareholder value."

    This narrow measure of company performance holds that what's good for a company's stock price is also what's good for the company and its customers and employees. So, for better and worse, many of today's CEOs are judged primarily by their stock prices.

    Capitalizing on this theme, Bloomberg has put together a list of CEO "underachievers"--big company CEOs whose stocks have done the worst relative to the broader market since the beginning of each CEO's tenure.

    Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) sits atop the list, with HP's stock having underperformed by a startling 30 percentage points since she took the job.

    James Gorman of Morgan Stanley (MS) and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America (BAC) hold the 5th and 6th slots, with both banks having struggled in the past couple of years.

    And, not surprisingly, the staggeringly well-compensated CEO of Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Stephen Chazen, owns a place in the top

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  • To the vast majority of the movie going world The Great Gatsby is a fantasized glimpse of a bygone era seen through the lens of a star-struck protagonist. The opulence is overwhelming and serves only as a metaphor of nation's corrupt dreams.

    To hedge fund managers operating in a bull market the movie just looks like summer in the Hamptons. Nick Colas of ConvergEx Group says the steep price hedgies are willing to pay for the right to gaze wistfully at the green light is flashing a red light for investors.

    Colas says the cost of renting a house in the Hamptons is an indicator, not just of how well New York is doing financially, but also how the big money ballers are going to spend their summer. Spoiler alert! It's going to be lonely in the canyons of Wall Street.

    "Let's face it, a lot of hedge fund managers are the guys who rent these houses," Colas explains. "If they're spending...$600,000 or more to rent them, where are they going to be this summer? At their desks churning the market or out in the Hamptons trying to relax a little bit?"

    Hedge funds famously underperform the broader market but this year a 10% gain has almost been a lay-up. If you're running a billion dollars and still getting away with taking 20% of the upside that's $20 million of income, a pretty good year by most measures.

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  • The Five Biggest College Myths

    By Bernice Napach | Daily Ticker – 2 hours 51 minutes ago

    It’s the conventional wisdom that students and parents do their research on colleges and costs before making any commitment to attend a particular institution.

    A public college or university will cost close to $9,000 a year for tuition and fees for in-state students and $21,000 for out-of-state students, according to the College Board. A private college or university will run about $28,000 per year on average, and many cost more. Add room and board and the costs are close to $50,000 for four years at a state institution and $168,000 at a private one.

    Related: America's Student Loan Crisis: Generation I.O.U.

    Jeff Selingo, editor at large of The Chronicle of Higher Education, and author of College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, says America’s higher education system is broken because the enormous costs don’t justify the results. He appeared on The Daily Ticker special “Generation I.O.U.” event and shared his the biggest myths surrounding college:

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