i wouldn't call it a monster salary. Its a step up for XPL, but if he is up to it, he will justify it with results.
I'm not so fussed about chasing big inflows. They already have over $13 bn. They should be making sufficient money already to justify a higher sp, even with competitive pricing pressures. But they are not. Linear managed to lose a lot each year, and XPL has yet to fully integrate it. If they start making $5m a year, no tax for a while, life will change.
I suspect a competent CEO will be able to drill down and quickly work out where the issues lie - solving them might be trickier, but It looks like reinvigorating staff, getting more aggressive about poorly priced PAS clients, migrating some PAS to MA (sounds easy but in practice probably not), getting insto and retail sales moving, focusing on any possible USP's in their offering compared with others, improving the software and client interactions, making sure they are claiming tax rebates (!) would probably be a good start.
XPL Price at posting:
9.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
