Posted on 12/15/2011 4:48:26 AM PST by TSgt
Exclusive survey shows America's CEOs enjoyed pay hikes of up to 40% last year – with one chief executive earning $145m
Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.
America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
If the board of directors think that is what they are worth then it’s nobodies’ damn business!
Capitalism warts and all is still ten zillion times better than anything else.
I like how some companies do it.
They require the CEO to heavily invest in their company, so if the company goes down, so does the CEO.
That sounds nice until you consider the incestuous nature of corporate boards.
I’ll agree it’s better than anything else but they don’t do themselves any favors.
Good, and I hope they give them the biggest, fastest corporate jets possible.
Not a sarcasm. I want our companies to be the richest and most powerful in the world, headed by the best CEO’s money can buy.
Unfortunately, the companies aren’t paying what they think a CEO is worth. It’s now become a rigged game, where you have inter-connected CEO’s sitting on each other’s boards guarenteeing out of control wages to each other, regardless of a companies performance or whether a company can even afford to pay it out.
If the CEO’s for their interest destroy a company, they just move on to the next one.
Just like John Corzine.
Why don’t you tell us how much you earn so we can determine whether we BELIEVE it’s egregious. If you can’t prove CEO salaries are detrimental to the economy, then you are merely showing jealousy.
The boards are “incestuous” as you put it, because the directors are the biggest stockholders, meaning in essence they own the companies in large part.
Investors can choose to get involved in the companies or not. We are not getting a basic course in economic realiy from these headlines.
If it worked, I’d be fine with it too.
But it’s not working any longer. Would you really say that American companies are out-performing the rest of the world?
-Thomas Sowell
While the Middle Class Suffers, Congress is Getting Richer – With Help From Legal Insider Trading
Well, I’m in the upper tax brackets but it’s under a million. ;-) I’m not jealous at all, I have a very nice income and lifestyle.
My concern is the uneven balance which fosters social unrest and the fact that they simply are worth what they are paid especially when the drive a company into the ground.
I’ve worked with many C-Suite types and know from personal experience that most aren’t worth what they are paid.
Please tell us what laws that you can prove were broken by corporate CEOs.
If the CEO’s “destroy a company” the “next one” will profit as a result.
All of this discussion is ass backward. Just like the corporate jet issue. I don’t want the CEO of Ford showing up to meet, say, the Japanese Prime Minister, after booking a coach flight on Southwest Airlines. I want him to say “be right there” and then arrive in something taht looks like Queen Amidala’s spaceship.
Our companies, CEO’s and people should be the richest in the world. Making our CEO’s be humble is like playng no winner softball games. It will not produce Babe Ruth.
I wish the media would do more stories on “rich” politicians especially those like Reid who made is riches as a Senator.
As Rush would say, HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
I have no issues with corporate jets. They are a corporate asset.
If a CEO runs a company into the ground, I cannot expect him to know how to run a company profitably, but he’ll still make millions of dollars destroying companies.
This is more agenda driven science. These numbers are likely cherry picked to bolster the Occucommies.
Pray for America
Do you suggest we “regulate” both Capitalism AND the US Constitution in order to "fix" these problems?
I disagree with the assumptions underlying your statement. Your personal idea of what “works” is meaningless in setting someone elses pay....unless you are the employer.
The reason an American company may suck is not CEO compensation. Was GM brought down (and bailed out the wrong way) because of CEO pay or exorbitant union benefits?
Oil companies impeded by CEO pay or Obama preventing pipelines and drilling?
Pharma companies held back by CEO pay or FDA overregulation?
The list goes on and on. The “it’s not working” easy answer is a misdirection, just like passing Obamacare because “healthcare isn’t working”.
Maybe the next time we’re losing a war we should try shooting petunias instead of bullets. Restraining CEO pay and giving the money to poor people will destroy our companies.
Let’s stop NFL players from making that kind of money. I guarantee you will see an explosion in construction - of basketball hoops, baseball fields and hockey rinks.
Oh I trust the system will fix itself, eventually.
Or destroy itself, eventually.
Capitalism tends to do that.
what are we talking about here Maybe 1,000 top ranking CEO’s in all the US? And yet this is touted as a systemic failure of capitalism?
Sadly you are mistaken, the CEO types you know who are idiots are still the best money can buy. There is a competition for them just like for football players or anything else. And most pro football players are smelly and stupid, as well as possessing mediocre talents compared to the top stars. Most NFL quarterbacks “suck” because money has brought in the best there are, and those are limited.
Believe me, I’ve been in the corporate world and I have seen what you have seen. That’s real life.
There are also lots of drunk, crooked, etc. plumbers. And the market system with some reasonable regulation will bring up the best. But you will NOT get the best plumbers or anything else by having Barack Obama and the democrats in Congress limit their pay.
$250M!
Where's the outrage?
This article is class envy.
".. in many cases executive compensation is egregious"
Really? How much is it costing you?
$250M!
Where's the outrage?
This article is class envy.
".. in many cases executive compensation is egregious"
Really? How much is it costing you?
There's a reason they get the big bucks ...
Otherwise it's all pissin’ and moanin’ about things you can't do anything about. UNLESS you want to do like the Left and get the government involved even more.
Hear! Hear!
End of story!
“IF” we leave it the heck alone.
Wasn’t it Coolidge who ended a very nasty recession the fastest by not doing a damn thing?
Ping a ding, ding!!!
I have to keep those rhetorical questions in my hip pocket!
A CEO may destroy a company just like anyone else screws anything else up in this life. I hired a guy to redo a bathroom. He’s in the business, has experience, was recommended. He was an angry incompetent probably drunk. He won’t be used by me again and he will not do as well as the guy I use now who is great and always in demand.
By what method would you prevent the first guy from getting paid? Or getting paid as much as he asked for?
Corzine IS getting screwed now for what he did. paying him less would have prevented his screw up? I think not. It will bring in even more incompetents.
Just like paying doctors less will not bring in all teh wonderful “better” doctors because they want to help people, like teh insane liberals say.
If the government limits CEO pay at private companies, the net result will be less successful American companies. tehre can be no other result.
And passing a law that they only get paid based on success is just a perversion of what already exists. It will take all risk out of the system because CEO’s will be afraid to take any. That’s what Barney Frank was after.
When you reach into my pocket, using the government to do so, you agree to dance to the music. You cannot run around and say get the government out of my business when you invite them in. Dang!
Win in November and THEN frog march all the bastards is the best we can hope for FRiend.
I invested in a tiny biotech. They were trying to cure some of life’s most devasating illnesses with gene therapy. Never made any money, failed after years and they finally changed directions. Produced a breakthrough or two along the way that were bought by other companies.
During this whole time, the stock message board was a lesson in class envy and idiocy. Constant calls to arrest the board of directors, the CEO was being paid “too much”, and there were constant calls to liquidate the company and give the money (Of course there wouldn’t be any) to the shareholders.
Many of the message board posters admitted they did NOT own stock in the company! That’s what you’re dealing with here.
I invested in that company knowing it was a risk. They brought in a well known and expensive CEO in an effort to achieve credibility in the industry, with government regulators, etc. There will be a hundred or a thousand companies like them down the tubes, and the CEO’s well paid, before one company cures the cancers, heart conditions, childhood diseases, etc., they were working on.
Without the money to be made in that field by CEO’s, researchers, etc., without the risks and these little companies trying and faling, we will never cure the diseases. Nor will anyone make money in biotech without those risks.
But the kooks on the stock message board wanted to pay the CEO nothing, fire him, arrest him, burn the “evil” company to the ground.
“At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark’s stock price decreased almost 54%.”
COMMENT:The price of CVS in December 25, 1998 was 27.156 and today $37.04....A 36% INCREASE.
“Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna’s stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement.”
COMMENT: Aetna’s stock price in January 2006 was $44.77 and is $39.28 today, a 12% decrease.
The source for my stock prices is GOOGLE FINANCE SITE.
I’m surprised shareholders go along with this. Doesn’t fat pay suck up their dividends?
Bravo and please see my post right before yours! This CEO pay bs is junk science.
You obviously didn't read the article. The article had "CEOs" without the apostrophe.
However, you just had to insert an apostrophe to make "CEO's" to make yourself look smart.
It's not working.
I do what I feel like, when I feel like doing it.
I’m not bound by rules, like you.
Ditto with the shareholders.
Not necessarily true. I can remember owning more stock in a company I worked for than several members of the board....combined. BTW, this was a VERY large Fortune 500 company.
Capitalism, like any other institution, requires maintenance. If capitalists get lazy and greedy (i.e. the corrupt back-scratching satirized in the "Dilbert" cartoon at the top of the thread), the institution decays and becomes incapable of sustaining itself against attack.
Some "capitalists" are a greater threat to capitalism than the entire OWS clown brigade put together.
“It’s not working.”
For you either.
The substance of his comments were on target.
Indeed. The one regulation I would impose would be a ban on "golden parachutes", insuring that if the company fails, the executives personally go down with the ship.
Sadly an indication that the Obama campaign to gin up class warfare in this country may succeed. And our corporate leaders can be counted on to help the effort along with impeccable timing.
More attempts at class warfare, it is no one’s business how much CEOs make. What ever the make is neither taking money from anyone else or giving it to them. This is BS and goes along with the frickin’ OWS BS, trying to bring down capitalism.
Tell us how CEOs making money is causing the down turn in the economy. Don't you think that Government interference is actually the cause of the bad economy or haven't you been paying attention. The reason capitalism doesn't seem to be working is because this country isn't capitalistic anymore, it is fascism at its finest.
Over regulation, over taxation and stupid rules such at Nafta have brought our country to it's knees, not capitalism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.