Jim Cramer wears many hats: investor, cable news host, website founder. Now, some of his own investors are saying that’s one hat too many.
Cramer hosts CNBC’s “Mad Money,” and is also the founder of investment and financial news site TheStreet.com, which is under-performing.
Shares of TheStreet (TST) are down -85% from a Dec. 2007 high (and down -4% today alone). Investors are not happy. The latest criticism comes from Cannell Capital LLC, a hedge fund that owns 9% of TheStreet.com. Cannell reportedly wants one of two things: Cramer to sell the site or quit CNBC.
According to the USA Today, Cannell wrote Cramer a pointed letter, laced with personal attacks:
From May 1999 to December 2013, you have extracted more than $14 million in cash payouts from TST, excluding millions more paid out as stock options. In addition, you have enjoyed considerable non-pecuniary compensation such as perfumed sedan driver(s) and assorted assistants who spray ionized lavender water on your barren cranium.
A similar situation arose in 2013, when TheStreet stakeholder Ron Bienvenu urged Cramer to choose between “Mad Money” and TheStreet.com, but a year has passed and he remains in both positions. Cramer, plans to hold on to TheStreet as long as he can, perhaps having his daughters play a role one day. As he told us in a “My First Big Break” interview earlier this year, “I wanted to be a journalist and I wanted to remain true to the promise I made to my mom… and I had met my father’s goals of having enough money to make a go of it and start my own publication rather than to be a person who just works for other people.”
For Cramer, it’s the best of both worlds. For now.