Given the pressures of an economy that has been decidedly less than robust, companies are looking for new ways to economize. Rather than deal with the bad publicity of paying a failed executive a large amount for an agreement to not work with a competitor, they are trying a new approach: convincing a competitor to hire the executive, and paying a porting of their salary and relocation costs. That's just what Chodex, a leader in printing technologies all over the planet, did.

"Some may think this is an outrageous idea, and would create anti-trust violations and significant risk of the release of company secrets. But it's clear our former CEO Pete Anthony had no clue what to do with the company secrets anyway. He was clueless. He just did what the lawyers told him to do as we headed in to bankruptcy," said a company spokesperson who refused to be identified. "It was like a clean slate every day. We were always starting from scratch."

Chodex's competitor, HALPAQ, was pleased with the approach. "We have so much legacy baggage here that starting with a clean slate every day seemed like a good idea." The board of directors said that the new CEO would be on the CBS hit series Undercover Boss. Because no one in the company knows him yet, there would be no chance that his fake identity would be accidentally disclosed. "No one has a clue what Mr. Anthony looks like, so the episode won't waste any time with fitting him with wigs and beards. They'll have much more time to dig into his articulate incompetence that makes him so charming to stock analysts. He has no clue what he should do, but the Wall Street folks love his way with a chart and his rattling off industry jargon is unrivaled."

Another competitor could not be convinced, and said with agreement not to reveal the source. "Our company has a different problem. We've been so successful in exceeding historical industry financial measures, and in our stock's performance, that we need to have some controls on our stratospheric achievements. Only an executive like Pete Anthony can reduce our operational performance to levels where we muddle along under the radar. We have not liked the regulatory attention and public animus that our high profit levels have caused." The company said that they were disappointed that Anthony signed with HALPAQ. "We missed our chance to be a mediocre company. We'll just have to continue being innovative and astute implementers of clear and effective corporate strategy. Our stock price might start getting too high because of rising and on-schedule dividends. We're ashamed of our highly decorated corporate responsibility programs. These high expectations are getting too much to take. We're still looking for someone to help us with these problem, but we're confident we'll find a bad fit for the CEO position sometime by the end of the year."

It's that time a year again we thought we would have a little fun. We hope you enjoy our April Fools