timezero

Sohu on Being Official Internet Content Sponsor for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (SOHU 3Q05 Conf Call Quotes)

The interesting thing about this firm is its founder, chairman and CEO Charles Zhang. He has an ego that is bigger than the firm and everyone else in the firm. He feels so good about being a celebrity. And, he does not like men, at least, those men acting like a man. So, he is pretty much surrounded by girls and subdued men. I personally talked to many Sohu employees. No one likes him. They said he is too obsessed with his fame. Please pay attention: that is his fame, not his firm's. If he does care about the latter, it is because the firm is a vehicle for him to be more famous. So, basically, the ones left at the firm are those who only say yes to him and flatter him.

Let us hope this King of Chinese Internet (at least he thinks so) will do someting good for the other investors. Would somone tell him stop exercising his low-exercisng-price options as a way to encourage other investors to buy? Did any one find after all these stock-buyback crap, sohu's shares out. has been steady? Why? Check out the insider tradings. So, the whole buy-back thing is to use other shareholder's money to push up the stock price in the open market while he buys at price below 5. Forget his open-market buying. Those are trivial compared to his option exercising.

Overall, this MIT Ph.D. graduate has got rewarded both psychologically and financially in a very sleek way. Does him remeber Sohu's IPO price in 1999 is 13?

I am not saying he is sort of evil like his counterpart at DHB, David Brooks. I am just saying without monitoring and power restriction, even a angel could turn into a demon. Charlce is well on his way to destroy value. Get a close look at Sohu's content offering's performance category-by-category, you will know what I am saying. And, think why Sohu owns five Top-50 sites in China but still got much less ads. revenue than Sina.