The parent company of the Super Fresh and Pathmark supermarket chains was blunt in what was expected to be a straightforward earnings report:

CEO Eric Claus is “leaving the Company effective immediately.”

Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. Inc., of Montvale, N.J., said it would start looking for a successor. In the meantime, executive chairman Christian Haub will return to the CEO duties he held from 1998 until 2005. Great Atlantic didn’t elaborate on Claus’ departure, but Haub said in a statement that the “current challenging economy continues to impact our business.”

Given how the deep recession has affected corporate America, it’s only natural to expect a lot of CEO turnover. But that’s not happening.

Earlier this year, a Booz & Co. study of leadership change at the world’s largest 2,500 public companies found that CEO departures fell 0.5 percent in North America from 2007 to 2008. Of the 361 “succession events” globally in 2008, 180 were planned, 127 were forced and 54 were the result of mergers.

Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist for Weber Shandwick, said that corporate boards seem to be following the proverb “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” With business weak and stock prices still below their peaks, boards don’t want to take a chance on replacing CEOs and make matters worse.

In fact, the tenure of CEOs in North America reached a median 7.9 years in 2008, up from 7.2 years over the 11 years that Booz, a management consulting firm, has analyzed turnover data.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm, says CEO turnover for the nine months ended Sept. 30 is down 17 percent.

In September, Challenger Gray counted 105 CEO departures, compared with 140 for the same month in 2008. A review of the data since the start of 2005 shows the largest number of departures was 152 in September 2006 while the smallest was 78 in April 2009.

Challenger Gray also groups leadership changes by the official reasons provided. In the first nine months of the year, 237 CEOs have resigned, 204 stepped down and 192 retired.

In fact, according to company press releases, more CEOs have apparently died (10) so far in 2009 than got fired (six).
 

The most recent recession hit the manufacturing sector hard. Still, within manufacturing, there have been pockets of strength, such as defense contracting.

Over the past 52 weeks, the 18-stock PHLX Defense Sector Index has risen 23 percent compared with a 17 percent increase for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

While future U.S. defense budgets are likely to shrink, recent years have been good for anyone supplying the military. That’s why it was intriguing to see how negotiations over the new collective bargaining agreement at Boeing Co.’s Delaware County operations would play out.

A four-year contract between Boeing and Local 1069 of the United Aerospace Workers expired on Oct. 1, but the two sides kept talking, reaching a tentative agreement on Oct. 14. On Sunday, members voted 5-1 to ratify a five-year deal.

During a press briefing in September, company officials stressed that they were seeking cost certainty to show its customers that labor costs have stabilized and are competitive. On Monday, spokesman Andrew H. Lee said this deal does that. (A call and email to Local 1060’s headquarters was not returned.) Read more about the terms here.

At a time when wage cuts and benefit reductions are common, the 1,789 members of the UAW who make Boeing Chinook helicopters and the fuselage of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft will enjoy increases.

Under the terms of the agreement, unionized workers will receive wage hikes in each year of the contract, starting with 3 percent in the first year.

The union also won improved pension benefits and maintained its health-care benefits at current contribution levels. Those are significant accomplishments in an era of pension dumping and cost-shifting on health care.

But I also view the contract as a sign of strength by an innovative area manufacturer that employs more than 5,400 people at its 355-acre complex in Ridley Township.

After all, labor peace there is also good for more than 830 Pennsylvania companies that depend on Boeing for their livelihood.
 

Can’t stand to read another word about social networking sites on the Web?

Me, too. Sure, LinkedIn and Facebook are pervasive, instant, and often powerful. But they can also can be intrusive, insistent, and strangely impersonal.

For those who like networking of the face-to-face kind, there are all sorts of professional organizations that have regular meetings, mixers, and business-card exchanges.

Then there is the nonprofit group started by Temple University entrepreneurship professor Chris Pavlides in May 2002. The Greater Philadelphia Senior Executive Group sounds exclusive, and it is.

Membership is limited to those who are or were “C-level” executives, make at least $150,000, and have 20 years of experience. Applicants must be sponsored by a current member. About 10 percent of applications are not accepted, Pavlides said.

(C-level isn’t a comment on their competency, but shorthand for the many chiefs in a business - chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and so on.)

Pavlides started his group as a way to help senior executives who were “in transition.” That’s a nice way of saying “between jobs.”

Given all the cost-cutting that’s gone on in corporate America, one place to slash that can save big money is in those C-level ranks, Pavlides said. Those who make big money are tempting targets for, say, your chief restructuring officer to trim.

Thus, there’s quite a bit of nervousness in the executive ranks, especially among those whose steady advancement over the years has bred a complacency about keeping their contacts current.

That helps explain how a group that’s grown simply by word of mouth accepted its 1,000th member last month. The Greater Philadelphia Senior Executive Group increased its ranks by nearly 350 in 13 months, at a time when other organizations are seeing declining membership.

Besides holding events around Center City, it has expanded to Princeton, the Lehigh Valley, and South Jersey. As former members have seen their careers take them away from Philadelphia, Pavlides said, he’s gotten inquiries about starting chapters in California, Texas, and even Alaska.

Pavlides believes the group’s growth is a reflection of the value it places on face-to-face networking. Its motto is “networking for life,” and he said that’s how we need to approach our careers. “It’s your best defense now.”

For many who have joined, the realization that they could be fired in the next round of belt-tightening was their epiphany. “We put all of our lives into a company, and it could go away tomorrow,” he said.

If you’re not reaching out to help or be helped by friends, colleagues, former bosses, customers and suppliers, you’re not building a network. That means networking is a two-way street. You must give as much as you get, Pavlides said.

Attrition from the group is quite small, perhaps 5 percent a year.

“Once you’ve been burned once, people don’t trust that it can’t happen again. The world is very finicky,” Pavlides said. “What stays with you is your network.”

That’s true even for those of us far below C-level.

Reader reaction to my column last week on buzzwords was swift, insightful and, often, very funny.

No one sought to defend the use of corporate-speak that obscures clarity. In fact, several who work in corporate communications indicated that they’d be sending my diatribe to others in their organizations, hoping that the prime offenders would see the error of their phrases.

One reader said “corporate communications” itself is a misnomer: “Most companies seem determined not to communicate anything at all.”

All offered jargon that annoyed them, including “leverage,” “win-win,” “deep dive,” “best practices” and “core competencies.”

A couple of people objected to the long-running de-personnel-ization of the workforce by using words such as “human capital” and “human resources.” One noted the Lake Wobegon effect of stretching the word “talent” to cover everyone pulling a paycheck.

“Think outside the box” was universally reviled. One poster on the PhillyInc blog wondered if there really were anyone left inside the box at this point.

Even as some callers commiserated with me, we agreed that buzzwords, like cockroaches, can never be stamped out.

Two days after I ranted about the use of the word “solutions,” I received a PR pitch about Campbell’s Chunky soups that described the Camden food producer’s consumer research into what men are “currently seeking in food solutions.”

I just lost my appetite.

Lots of losses

Capmark Financial Group Inc., which may sell its commercial mortgage business to a joint venture that involves billionaire Warren Buffett, is a mess.

Last week, Capmark said its second-quarter net loss was $1.6 billion compared with net income of $11.5 million for the same quarter in 2008. In the first quarter, it lost $782 million.

The company said it may have to file for bankruptcy to reorganize its finances. Plus, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. intends to put restrictions on its Capmark Bank.

GMAC L.L.C. sold a controlling interest in Capmark to a group of private-equity firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., in 2006.

Let’s start Monday with some business buzzwords:

Synergy. Think outside the box. Customer centric. On the same page.

All are words we hear 20 times a day at work. You’ll be happy to know that they’re among the most annoying or overused phrases as mentioned by 150 senior executives, too, in a recent poll by the temporary staffing service Accountemps.

Perhaps it’s the mindless repetition of them that’s so irritating. But let’s not discount the idiocy of some jargon. After all, any company that’s not customer centric can’t be in business for very long.

These phrases are so loathed that Accountemps put them into its buzzword hall of fame along with the one that irks me the most: “solution.”

Technology companies are some of the prime offenders, proudly stating in their press releases that they sell solutions, prompting me to wonder, “What’s the problem?” Car dealers don’t sell solutions. Neither do dress shops. When my toaster dies, I buy another toaster, not a bread-browning solution.

The financial-services sector is big on peddling solutions, too. After the massive government rescues of banks and insurers, executives would do well to avoid using that word when they next testify before the House Financial Services Committee.

Why must companies cloud what they do, even when they make trust accounting systems or sell variable annuities. Trust me. I don’t bore that easily. But those who call their product or service a “solution” drop a few pegs on my trust meter.

Every company has a boilerplate description of what it is in business to do. Maybe it’s so bland and full of jargon because it’s been lawyered to death. Or maybe it’s deliberately vague to hide the fact that its niche product really can’t be applied to a broader customer base.

When I interview managers, I ask them to tell me what their companies do as if they were explaining it to their 7-year-old son or daughter. Saying “we provide solutions” doesn’t fly with the Transformers or Bratz set.

If anything, clear communication is more important in a bad economy than a good one. The survivors left in leaner workplaces have little patience to hear how they must “interface” with other levels of their organizations.

As much as business has cut back over the last year, one thing none of us would miss from meetings and memos are phrases such as “circle back,” “cutting edge” and “value add.”

Poll: Most annoying business buzzwords (517 votes)

Put two big pharmaceutical companies together and people notice, but two large benefits consulting firms …?

Well, I only noticed this billion-dollar deal because one of the consulting firms is Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby Inc., which was founded in Philadelphia in 1934.

Now based in Stamford, Conn., Towers Perrin is one of those “quiet giants” in Philadelphia business circles. It’s been a major tenant in the Centre Square office building at 1500 Market St. since 1975. And that office remains its biggest, employing 1,016 people, or 16 percent of its total workforce.

Towers Perrin is quiet, for one thing, because it’s a private company. But while Philadelphians frequent the convenience stores of the privately held Wawa and the concession stands at arenas run by privately owned Aramark, they are largely unaware of how Towers Perrin may intersect their lives.

Towers Perrin’s game is providing management consulting services, which means it employs lots of actuaries, risk managers, and employee benefits and insurance professionals.

On Sunday, Towers Perrin agreed to merge with the publicly held Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. in a transaction valued at about $3.5 billion. The resulting organization will be called Towers Watson & Co. and have annual revenues of more than $3 billion.

Watson Wyatt, of Arlington, Va., is the bigger firm with 7,700 employees worldwide, including offices in Berwyn and Philadelphia.

Where’s the exit?

James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, will speak in Philadelphia Tuesday about the central bank’s “exit strategies” from the emergency lending programs that have helped rescue the U.S. economy.

It should be a timely lecture, coming soon after Bullard’s counterpart at the Dallas Fed told Bloomberg News on Friday that such strategies are “not ready to be articulated” until the “appropriate time.”

Let’s hope today’s more appropriate.

College commencements are largely over, the graduation cards have been opened, and now the hard part:

Finding a job during a time of rising unemployment.

Last week, Campus Philly held what it called an Opportunity Fair on the St. Joseph’s University campus that attracted 825 grads to network and meet representatives from 45 companies that had openings for jobs or internships.

This week, a smaller event caught my eye, called “Getting the Kids Off the Payroll.” The June 25th workshop, being presented by the executive search firm Salveson Stetson Group, is geared toward helping college graduates and their parents apply strategies to find the doors that might open into the work world.

The Radnor firm normally places executives in six-figure positions at Fortune 500 firms and nonprofit organizations. However, many Salveson Stetson clients have been mentioning their frustration over their sons’ and daughters’ stalled job searches.

John F. Salveson could relate, because the two most recent college graduates from his household didn’t know how to begin either.

Few people in their 20s know how the career game works, and colleges and universities don’t do a good job preparing them for it, Salveson said. Often, parents haven’t looked for a job in a long time and don’t know how to help their kids.

Now the event’s sold-out - 25 families will participate - but I asked Salveson what’s the No. 1 thing he’ll impress on them. “This is a contact sport,” he said.

By that, he means building contacts in-person, not electronically through social media networks or texting. He doesn’t believe those tools will get you a job.

Instead, grads must focus on what they want to do, and what kind of company they want to do it for, Salveson said. They shouldn’t be searching for open jobs, but learning as much as they can about the field they want to pursue.

You do that by trying to get meetings in the offices of people at the companies in that industry and asking lots of questions. How do you get that first meeting? It could start with a referral by a parent to one of their friends or colleagues. That’s how someone begins to build relationships in a network that will lead to opportunities at some point.

Yes, the job market is gloomy, but you can’t let your mindset be that way, Salveson advised. Building a network is not a linear process, but it’s the kind of effort that will help you find the internships and job openings before they’re advertised.

Salveson’s children are gainfully employed. His daughter, Kate, now 24, works in recruitment for a health-care company in Kennett Square. His son, Peter, now 26, does market research for a publishing firm.

Obviously, who you know can be important. But connections alone won’t get you the job, Salveson said. That’s up to the grads, their knowledge, their enthusiasm and their initiative.

Legally speaking

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Woodcock Washburn L.L.P., the Philadelphia intellectual property law firm, two 10-year contracts worth as much as $314 million.

One contract to provide legal services in the field of biotechnology amounts to up to $199.5 million. The other, for chemistry, is for up to $114.5 million.

Woodcock Washburn, which has been a contractor for NIH since 2002, was one of just three law firms to have been awarded both contracts.

Annual Meetings

This week’s shareholder meetings:

* Armstrong World Industries, Tyco Electronics Ltd. (Monday.)

* Orthovita (Tuesday.)

* Astea International, Pep Boys — Manny, Moe & Jack (Wednesday.)

* Charming Shoppes (Thursday.)
 

Guy J. Quigley, chairman, president and CEO of Quigley Corp., who founded the maker of the Cold-Eeze line of cold remedies 20 years ago, resigned Friday afternoon.

The Doylestown company was the subject of a proxy battle this spring led by New York investor Ted Karkus. His dissident slate of seven directors won a majority of the votes cast at the May 20 annual meeting.

Quigley’s chief operating officer, Charles A. Phillips, and accounting operations manager, Wendy D. Quigley, also resigned.

Word of the resignations came after the stock market had closed. Shares closed at $4.26, up 26 cents, or 6.5 percent.

Here's a link to Quigley Corp.'s press release.

And a link to a PhillyInc post from last month.

For Rob Enslin, there could have been a better time than February to start as the new president of SAP America.

As we know now, the U.S. economy shrank at an annualized rate of 6.1 percent during the first quarter. That was worse than economists had expected.

The German business-software maker that Enslin works for also had a challenging first quarter. Yesterday, SAP AG reported net income fell 16 percent to 204 million euros (or $269 million) compared with 242 million euros. Total revenue decreased 3 percent.

Enslin, 47, got the job of overseeing all SAP businesses in North America about a month after the company announced that it would freeze salaries and cut more than 3,000 jobs worldwide by year’s end.

Given that SAP software and systems are used in 26 different industries, Enslin has seen how the global downturn has affected all parts of the economy.

When I met with him at SAP’s Newtown Square headquarters recently, Enslin said chemicals, financial services and commodities have been under particular stress.

But he was also optimistic about business conditions. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve indicated that it, too, sees signs that the worst of the recession may be over.

Before his recent return to the U.S., Enslin had been chief operating officer of SAP’s Fast Growth markets for its Global Field Operations unit. That put him in the blast furnace of some sizzling economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and other nations generally tagged as “emerging.”

“Emerging is a strange word,” said Enslin. “These countries have emerged.”

Still, implementing an SAP enterprise resource planning system can take six to 12 months. The financial shockwave that hit in September caused boards of directors everywhere to hesitate to greenlight such massive technology transformations.

Now, Enslin said, the economic-stimulus plan holds potential for SAP in areas such as construction, energy and emissions control.

And if one aim of all that spending is to encourage a more sustainable global economy, Enslin has a new building in Newtown Square he’d like to show off.

Tomorrow: SAP’s green headquarters.