My point is that being somewhere at a particular time seldom makes or breaks
any transaction and the larger the transaction, the less likely it matters.
Does anybody really think that today's merger between Chevron and Unocal
would not have taken place if someone had been a few hours or even a week
late?

Corporate jets serve many purposes but mainly to conserve valuable people's
time. The value of an employee's time to the company is about 3x his/her
salary and it is easy to see how the cost could be justified with highly
compensated employees. Travel by corporate jet is also considered more
secure since passengers aren't exposed to the public.

Mike
MU-2


"Dude" wrote in message
...

The fact remains that big deals are not lost due to the lack of a
coporate jet to get people somewhere a few hours earlier..

Mike
MU-2


Mike,

I don't believe its established that its a fact. You cannot prove a
negative, so you cannot prove your point. On the other hand, I have seen
multi million dollar deals go south for reasons of people being late, and
other small things.

At a certain level in corporate america, the schedules get tight enough
that even a corporate jet isn't enough to get your top executives around
enough to keep the relationships strong enough. I have hade plenty of
experience with SMB's that get insulted that your Fortune 100 CEO or other
C level guy hasn't been out to see them in person. Sometimes you can
overcome that, and sometimes you can't.

One thing that is even harder to overcome is your guy showing up on late
AND saying the wrong things. This problem has cost me enough to pay for
my airplane, and one jerk who blew it for me left our company (after
mismanaging it as president and COO, and went on to mismanage a bigger
company as CEO for even more money). It pays to have connections on Wall
Sreet. Especially if you are incompetent.