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Here Are a Couple of the Tweets That Helped Get the Francesca CFO Fired

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Yesterday morning we linked to a little story about Francesca Holdings Corp. CFO Gene Morphis getting fired for "improperly communicat[ing] company information through social media." The Journal picked it up later in the day with details on some of this social media activity that we thought we'd share with you

Seems harmless, right? Here's Exhibit B:

Perhaps this sad attempt at trash talking was the last straw? These tweets along with Facebook status postings going back to December and a blog that were kept by Morphis were enough to send him packing:

"We are disappointed by this situation but we expect our executives to comply with all company policies," said Greg Brenneman, chairman of Francesca's board of directors and the chairman of private-equity firm CCMP Capital, in a statement.

Let this be a lesson to all of you who are happily kvetching about your jobs online.  

Facebook and Twitter Postings Cost CFO His Job [WSJ via NYM]

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Lataillade and his lawyers said that the company, which fired Lataillade last September, never had any trouble with his monitoring of its finances in his long tenure at Marc Jacobs International. His work was checked and rechecked not only by accountants for LVMH, the French luxury conglomerate that owns Marc Jacobs International, but also by the company’s accounting firm Deloitte and Touch [sic]. Lataillade claims he never heard a complaint about his performance, and that he was really fired for speaking out against sexual discrimination at work.

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Marc Jacobs Says Former CFO Was Fired Because He Was Cooking the Books Not Because He Complained About a Pole Dance, All the Porn Floating Around

Marc Jacobs International claims that its former COO and CFO, Patrice Lataillade, got a little fancy with the company’s numbers in order to give himself “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bonuses. The Post reports that court documents state that audits revealed “false and inflated entries” for about $20 million or so. The company says Lataillade was fired from his job for all this financial hocus pocus,

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“Examples of Duffy’s conduct which created a hostile work environment include his displaying gay pornography in the office and requiring employees to look at it; his production and dissemination of a book which includes photos of MJI staff in sexual positions or nude; his requirement that an MJI store employee perform a pole dance for him,” the suit said.

Accounting/finance types can be get a little stuffy, that’s a given but seeing co-workers in various compromising positions and/or working a pole at the boss’s behest could make for some awkward looks/conversations later. Not that it excuses running through some bullshit journal entries for your own personal financial benefit but I suppose there may be a legitimate beef in there.

Marc Jacobs COO fired for ‘cooking books’ not harassment: court filings [NYP]