如何解雇一位带来70万%回报的CEO？一个简单的办法是让政府强制你这么做，但特朗普总统认为英伟达的黄仁勋应该留任。另一个办法是让股东强制你这么做，但我预计英伟达股价将在周一的跌幅基础上反弹——按“我们的CEO与中国间谍有染”这种标准来看，跌幅相对温和——并在本周结束前收复失地。或者说，我押注股价反弹的胜算，比预测市场押注黄仁勋被解职的胜算要大，后者目前显示年底前被解职的概率为14%，等到民主党拿到调查权时概率会略高一些。
How do you fire a CEO who has delivered 700,000% returns? One easy way is for the government to make you, but President Donald Trump thinks Nvidia’s Jensen Huang should keep his job. Another is for shareholders to make you, but I’d expect Nvidia’s shares to regain Monday’s losses — relatively muted by the standards of “our CEO had an affair with a Chinese spy” — by week’s end. Or at least I’d put better odds on that than the prediction markets are putting on Huang being fired, currently at 14% by the end of the year and a bit higher by the time Democrats get their gavel swinging.
很大程度上将取决于民主党人和正在自行调查的英伟达董事会，能挖出多少关于谁知情、何时知情的信息。但更大的问题是：没有黄仁勋掌舵，英伟达值多少钱？正如英伟达编年史作者斯蒂芬·威特周一所言，他是这家全球市值最高公司背后不可或缺的力量，还是一个能干的推销员，推销的产品如今已热销到不需要他亲自推销？
Much will depend on what those Democrats and Nvidia’s board, which is running its own investigation, unearth about who knew what and when. But the bigger question is what Nvidia is worth without Huang at its helm. Is he the indispensable force behind the world’s most valuable company, as Nvidia chronicler Stephen Witt suggested Monday, or an able salesman of a sought-after product that, by now, sells itself?
如今企业首脑比以往任何时候都更容易被替换（也确实被更频繁地替换），因为这份工作越来越取决于如何应对投资者、监管机构和我们媒体这些利益相关方，而非掌握某个特定的企业核心引擎。黄仁勋和埃隆·马斯克这种独特且麻烦的门面人物——以及在较小程度上、但更涉及性丑闻的AMC首席执行官亚当·阿龙——是例外，这让他们的董事会陷入两难。
Corporate chiefs today are more replaceable (and replaced) than ever, as the job has come to hinge more on handling constituencies of investors, regulators, and us in the media than on mastery of any particular corporate engine room. Singular and problematic frontmen like Huang and Elon Musk — and to a lesser, but more sex-scandal-germane degree, AMC’s Adam Aron — are the exceptions, and put their boards in a bind.