Adventures in Corporate Doublespeak, Jones Apparel Edition

Jones Apparel CEO Peter Boneparth has been fired. Bloomberg explains why:

Jones stock has dropped by almost a third since Boneparth, a former investment banker, took the helm five years ago. The company in February reported its first annual loss in at least 17 years and a month later said it wouldn't retain Boneparth after his contract expired in 2009...
Jones's profit has declined or it reported a loss in eight of the past 10 quarters.

That'll do it. But the chairman of the board, Sidney Kimmel, doesn't want to just come out and say that the CEO was underperforming and therefore unceremoniously ousted. Instead, the company press release quotes him as he embarks boldly upon a course of classic corporate doublespeak. The incoming CEO, Wes Card, has demonstrated "a commitment to utilizing our outstanding design, merchandising and operating talent to capitalize on opportunities in the marketplace," Kimmel's quoted as saying, adding that "Peter and the Board agreed that this was an appropriate time to transition our leadership."

"Transition," Mr Kimmel, is not a verb. Or if it is, it shouldn't be. And in any event, I looked it up in my thesaurus, and it's not listed as a synonym for "fire". Next time, could we have a little more in the way of honesty and a little less in the way of euphemistic and obfuscatory circumlocutions? You now have a CFO named John McClain. With any luck, he'll import John McClane's ability to get straight to the point. You clearly need it.

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