Whatever you think of Martha Stewart, one fact seems obvious: She has lousy taste in men.
In a week that marked the ninth anniversary of her conviction for obstruction of justice relating to her timely stock trade in ImClone (the biotech giant run by her friend the brilliant but wily Sam Waksal), Stewart found herself in a downtown Manhattan courtroom again, testifying why she jilted one loyal patron for the flashy new guy on the block.
The outcome of this proceeding will likely be the same as the first, with Stewart on the losing end.
In the sequel to the 2004 drama, we’ve been treated to two weeks of testimony from the Domestic Diva and the two men who are vying to sell her wares. Terry Lundgren, the courtly chief executive of Macy’s, stuttered on the stand like a jilted lover as he recalled hearing the news that Stewart was two-timing him with JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson.
But it wasn’t long before trial-watchers discovered that Martha was wooed into a separate and seemingly parallel deal with JCPenney with the help of Bill Ackman, the always confident and controversial hedge-fund manager who has a huge stake in the ailing retailer.
“Great work, Bill. You get a huge assist here,” crowed Johnson in an e-mail after Martha signed on. “We put Terry in the corner.” Court-ordered arbitration will determine whether that boast is true.
To be sure, the frat-boy-like exchanges inspire little confidence in Penney’s future. The stock price has dropped by more than half since Johnson took the helm in November 2011. That Stewart opted to make her bed with Ackman, who has never run a company, risking her relationship with the veteran Lundgren, shows she hasn’t learned much in the years since her conviction.
For shareholders in her Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, that has been all too clear for some time. After hitting a high of $36 a share in January 2005, the stock sits below $3 a share today.
It was also likely not lost on Stewart that early last week, a far fresher style maven, 46-year-old Tory Burch, made it onto the Forbes list of billionaires for the first time ever.
By some estimates, Burch’s company is now worth $3.5 billion, or more than 10 times Martha’s.