(The Industry Standard)

The so-called last mile is a killer. That's especially true if you're not a long-distance runner but a sprinter, as it turns out that Webvan CEO George Shaheen was. He resigned Friday after 18 months at the helm of the Net grocer that was going to conquer kitchens everywhere. Shaheen wasn't giving interviews, so the real noise generated by his resignation was the humming of journos' calculators as they tallied up Shaheen's lost millions.

Ka-ching! The Associated Press recounted that when the ex-exec ditched a 30-year career at Andersen Consulting, he was wooed by a $13.5-million signing bonus that let him buy 1.25 million shares of Webvan stock and another 15 million in options. He also got a $500,000 annual salary, but who was counting salary back in 1999? Maybe Shaheen, who had been earning $4 million annually at Andersen, wishes he had been. The exercise price on his fat options package is $8 per share, and with Webvan's stock now trading, if you want to call it that, at the Bazooka-gum price of 12 cents, his boatload of stock is "worthless," according to the Financial Times. The thriftier New York Times valued Shaheen's stock and options package at $150,000.

Don't expect to see Shaheen standing in the unemployment line as he "pursues new opportunities." The San Francisco Chronicle reported that his contract entitles him to two years of severance pay if he resigns "for good reason." News.com pegged his going-away package at $1.5 million and, for the optimistic out there, two years of additional vesting on his stock options. Shaheen's official statement said it "no longer made sense" for him to stay.

Is that a good enough reason? Webvan wouldn't say, according to the Chron. At the New York Post, reporter Joseph Gallivan's calculator whirred away and he pointed out that if Shaheen had stayed at Andersen just 11 more months, he would have reaped a $10 million bonus and $50 million-ish from the spinoff of Accenture, Andersen's consulting division. Now that would buy a lot of groceries.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Shaheen was in Webvan's checkout line long before he resigned. The paper quoted an unnamed source as saying that chief operating officer Robert Swan had been running Webvan's operations for a while and that Shaheen's departure was "more a question of when than why." Expect an announcement about Shaheen's succession "within the week," a spokesman told the media. We bet they're lined up around the corner for that one.

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