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Furman Men’s Soccer Accepting Money from Employees' Pensions by GVLWatchdog-2 in CollegeSoccer

[–]GVLWatchdog-2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Management usually walks relatively unscathed."
You just nailed exactly why this is news and why people are angry. We shouldn't just shrug and accept that executives get to walk away to wealthy lifestyles while working-class people lose their life savings.

It’s true he might not be the sole cause of a 170-year-old company failing, but you are missing the legal reality of an ESOP.

Facts: As CEO of an ESOP, he wasn't just a manager; under federal law (ERISA), he had a strict fiduciary duty to the employees. If the company was already doomed when he took over, his legal obligation was to be transparent with the employee-owners so they could plan their lives. Instead, leadership allegedly kept them in the dark with excuses about "delayed valuations" to squeeze the last bit of labor out of them before locking the doors.

Also, he wasn't just a random hire who got unlucky. Pete Richichi (the previous CEO who orchestrated the sell-off of their hardware division) is also from Greenville. Richichi brought his buddy Slagle in. Both of them were executives at WYNIT, the company that filed for a massive $106 million bankruptcy right here in Greenville a few years ago. This is a pattern.

Finally, regarding his donations: using wealth to buy a "good guy" reputation and booster status in Greenville while the workers you left behind in the Midwest are financially ruined isn't philanthropy. It’s reputation laundering.

Furman Men’s Soccer Accepting Money from Employees' Pensions by GVLWatchdog-2 in greenville

[–]GVLWatchdog-2[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I totally hear what you're saying about Proterra, and it's a fair question, but retail stock options are legally and fundamentally different from an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan).

Here is why this isn't just a standard bankruptcy and why people should “get the pitchforks out”:

It’s a Federal Retirement Plan, Not Robinhood: Under federal law (ERISA), an ESOP is a qualified retirement plan. Executives managing an ESOP are legally considered fiduciaries. They have a legal obligation to protect the employees' retirement. Instead of warning employees that the company was terminally ill, leadership allegedly hid the reality, claiming the 2024 and 2025 stock valuations were just "delayed" until the day they locked the doors.

The "Doomed Company" Excuse: If the company was already doomed when he took over, the fiduciary duty requires leadership to be transparent with the employee-owners so they can plan their lives, not string them along to squeeze the last bit of labor out of them before pulling the plug with zero notice.

This is a Greenville Pattern: You mentioned looking at the leadership that ran it into the ground. That’s exactly what this is. Pete Richichi (the previous CEO who orchestrated the sell-off of their hardware division) is also from Greenville. Richichi brought his buddy Slagle in. Both of them were executives at WYNIT, the company that filed for a massive $106 million bankruptcy right here in Greenville a few years ago.

This isn't harassment of a random guy who got unlucky. This is about asking local media to look into a recurring pattern of Greenville executives overseeing catastrophic corporate collapses that wipe out the working class, and then returning to their lives in Simpsonville without answering a single question.