Word: gracefully
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...obscure legal secretary at the giant firm of Baker & McKenzie who sensitized corporate America to the consequences. The precedent-setting $3.5 million award that Rena Weeks won last year against the law firm could not have have been far from the minds of directors at W.R. Grace & Co. when they ousted the firm's president and CEO, J.P. Bolduc. Last week the board acknowledged that evidence of sexual harassment was the real reason for his March 2 departure, and in the process created a new corporate milestone. "This is the first time that a company has taken the action...
...thing about this very modern melodrama is that it was played out among the septuagenarians on the board of Grace, whose founder, Irishman William Grace, started the venture back in 1854 by shipping bird dung from Peru to the U.S. for use as fertilizer. Perhaps more predictably, last week's admission came only after weeks of obfuscation on the part of the troubled company. The $5 billion conglomerate, which produces everything from plastics to kidney-dialysis equipment, initially blamed Bolduc's abrupt departure on "differences of style and philosophy...
...after the New York Times obtained a preliminary draft of the firm's upcoming proxy statement, which cited unspecified evidence that Bolduc, 55, had harassed five female employees, Grace conceded that the allegations had inspired the board to oust him. One director said the findings included documentation from five different areas of the company; the Times reported that his misconduct involved making "suggestive remarks'' and "engaging in unwelcome physical contact'' with the employees...
...fair, the company noted in lawyerly prose that Bolduc, who is married and has four children, "vehemently denied and continues to deny" any sexual misconduct. Grace further pointed out that none of the women who came forward has so far filed any formal harassment complaint against the former CEO. As a result, Grace said, its directors decided "to request Mr. Bolduc's resignation, but not to seek his termination for cause...
...timing of Bolduc's ouster raised questions in some quarters about whether the board might have used the harassment charges as the ultimate weapon in a long-standing corporate power struggle. Before his departure, Bolduc had repeatedly clashed with then chairman J. Peter Grace, 81, who suffers from lung cancer. Among other things, Bolduc wanted the company to disclose to its shareholders that it was spending, among other things, $165,000 on Grace's annual nursing care and $200,000 a year for his security guards...