The announcement yesterday that USANA has promoted Dave Wentz to CEO from President seems like good news for the company but also may require some further examination into other positions Wentz has as well.
As we reported last month, Wentz was appointed the Direct Selling Association’s new Chairman. While the news seemed a bit harmless at the time (Wentz was President of USANA when the announcement was made and not an officer of the Company) it does now represent some questions as to whether or not there may be a conflict of interest or questions about corporate governance with him now serving both roles.
While the overall role of the DSA remains a bit sticky to us (after the Weekenders debacle and the DSA having no information to provide at all about what happened - even after several repeated requests to the company), it does beg to ask, should an active CEO of a publicly traded company that also serves as Chairman of an organization that lists its competitors as members be acceptable?
The DSA does not list any information on its site about what it takes to be the Chairman of the organization, nor does it disclose how much money any of the organizations donate or pay over the year for the privilege to say they are part of the DSA other than to vaguely express that membership dues are based on the yearly total of direct sales a company generates. This does not include any retail or catalogue sales a company may have, only the direct selling portion of the business.
In a show of good corporate governance and disclosure, I absolutely think that the DSA should list (or at least provide access to) how much money a participating organization donates/gives to them on an annual basis - especially those that are public. What is a bit more ironic is that the DSA announced a “DSA Ethics and Self Regulations Committee Teleconference” is scheduled for next week but of course, no media is allowed. Then again, why would any media be allowed to a Self Regulation conference?
Which gets me back to the original question…as the CEO of a publicly traded company things like ethics and regulatory issues are all public information and fall under the guidelines of corporate governance. While I recognize that the DSA is neither public nor demanded to make any of their financial information public, since they are organized to not only “protect and serve” the interests of the public and the companies in which they are made up of, why be so secretive and not make the information available - especially since its new Chairman must do so in his other job. The joint positions that Dave Wentz now holds do raise questions of a conflict of interest. We have no question about his ability to serve in his current roles nor his ability to do so at the highest level and garner great success, however as the newly appointed CEO and officer of a publicly traded company, should he also be the Chairman of an organization that determines whether or not companies which are competitive to his own are accepted or rejected? hmmm
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