A source of secrets

NEW YORK -- Here's some advice to corporate America: If you want to make sure proprietary information about your companies stays that way, you better add marriage counselors to your staff.

If what's happened just in the last month is any indication, divorce court is becoming the place to look for juicy details about the finances of top executives and the businesses they operate.

It goes like this: A high-powered marriage breaks up, and after settlement talks fail, a scorned mate makes public through their divorce proceedings all sorts of company secrets -- from lavish executive pay and perks to corporate dealings.

Forget regulatory filings and annual reports. This is public disclosure of a different kind, with powerful repercussions.

"There are many adverse consequences of divorce, not just for you, but for your company, too," said Jerry Reisman, an attorney specializing in corporate finance in Garden City, New York.

The estranged wives of former General Electric chairman Jack Welch and current Ernst & Young CEO Richard Bobrow have gone to court to fight for higher-paying divorce agreements.

These women -- Jane Welch and Jan Bobrow -- want a portion of the big money that they say their husbands make. They say they are entitled to keep the lifestyle they've grown accustomed to and helped earn.

Both women first tried to get respectable divorce settlements from their husbands, but when that didn't happen, they chose to disclose the magnitude of their spouses' wealth.

And that's sure been revealing, not just for readers of gossip columns and society pages, but for investors and competitors, too.

In the Welch case, investors were surprised to learn that the former executive was still being showered with costly perks by GE, which even picked up his dry-cleaning tab.

Too bad the details of this extravagance weren't spelled out in the proxy statement mailed to shareholders. Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating why.

Gave up perks

Jane Welch's disclosures generated so much criticism of both Welch and GE that the former chairman decided to give up most of his perks and to reimburse the company for the special services provided since his retirement last year.

The Bobrow case is different, with perhaps more serious implications for the company: Ernst & Young is privately held and does not have to disclose details of its financial performance. The divorce did that anyway.

Judge Steve Nation of Hamilton Superior Court, outside Indianapolis, recently issued an opinion that put a value of $5.53 billion on the accounting firm as of March 2000, when the couple separated. According to the court papers, Bobrow's stake in the firm was 0.22 percent, and this earned him $2.75 million in 2000 and $3.125 million last year.

That's far more informative than what was in the company's annual report. Released on Monday, it said only that revenues for the year ended June 30 were $10.1 billion, up $300 million from the previous year.

Judge Nation awarded Jan Bobrow just over $14 million -- or 60 percent of the couple's net worth as he valued it. The husband is appealing.

What makes the revelations so damaging are their usefulness to competitors. They now know not only the salary and other earnings of its CEO, but the value of the firm's client relationships, which also was outlined in the judge's opinion. With that insight into Ernst & Young's financial picture, they can better map their own strategies.

No one said divorce was easy. But now it seems it's no longer difficult just for the parting couple, but for the company and its other employees, too.

Rachel Beck is the national business columnist for The Associated Press. Write to her at rbeck@ap.org.