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NEW YORK - U.S. companies that outsourced the most jobs in 2003 also offered well-above average pay increases to their chief executives, according to a new study released this morning. Companies that made outsized political contributions to either the Democratic or the Republican parties also paid their CEOs unusually well, the study finds. More From Dan Ackman The average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs increased by 46% in 2003. That increase compares to an average hike of 9% for CEOs at 365 of the largest U.S. companies, according to a report by the Institute...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Almost no one in America would admit to being overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved. "Fair compensation" is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances. And while it's easy to argue that chief executives, lawyers and movie stars are overpaid, reality is not that cut and dry. Corporate attorneys earning $500 an hour and plaintiffs lawyers pocketing a third of a class-action or personal-injury settlement certainly don't go hungry. Yet many local prosecutors...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 23 (Reuters) - General Electric Co. shareholders on Wednesday narrowly defeated a resolution at the company's annual meeting that was designed to curb executive "golden parachutes" amid lingering resentment over former Chairman Jack Welch's retirement package. The vote was one of the closest in GE history. No shareholder resolutions have passed in recent memory, GE spokesman Gary Sheffer said. All 13 shareholder resolutions - ranging on topics from global warming to pay disparity - were defeated at GE's annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. Nevertheless, investor discontent was evident...

After Employees Agree to Cuts, American Airlines Discloses Trust to Shield Executives FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- One day after American Airlines employees agreed to annual cuts of $1.8 billion, the cooperative spirit turned acrimonious Thursday as union leaders expressed outrage over newly disclosed perks granted to executives. One angry union leader said if workers had known earlier about a pension trust created last year to protect executives' benefits in the event of a bankruptcy filing, they might have voted against the steep concessions intended to keep the world's largest carrier out of Chapter 11. The executive perks, which included...

washingtonpost.com As Carriers Sought Help, Top Tier's Pay Soared By Keith L. Alexander Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 12, 2003; Page E01 For airline employees and investors, 2002 was one of the worst years in history. But for most chief executives of U.S. carriers, it was one of the best. While the air industry grappled with a steady decline in travel due to the weak economy and the lingering effects of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, airline boards piled on hefty rewards for their senior executives. Certainly the airlines weren't the only companies bestowing largess on their top...

NEW YORK -- A blue-ribbon panel on a mission to restore public trust in the capital markets thinks one way to do it is to limit the power of the chief executive officer. Related Quotes CSXENEINTCJNJDJIANASDAQ^SPC 30.23N/A17.0656.858776.181438.46927.57 +0.89N/A+0.38+1.12+180.87+37.39+17.64 delayed 20 mins - disclaimerQuote Data provided by Reuters Our Tech Section is growing! Check headlines for: Communications, Internet, Software and more... Technology News As part of recommendations released Thursday, the panel is advocating companies consider several alternative board structures, including separating the chief executive and chairman's role, or if the same person wears both hats, appointing a presiding director. The recommendations by...

<p>Running companies that became almost worthless didn't stop dozens of Silicon Valley insiders from pocketing billions of dollars by selling their stock during the tech boom and bust.</p> <p>The Mercury News examined the stock sales record of insiders at 40 companies in Silicon Valley that have lost virtually all their value since the stock market peaked in March 2000. The executives, board members and venture capitalists at these companies walked off with $3.41 billion, while their companies' total market value plunged 99.8 percent to a mere $229.5 million at the end of September.</p>

Ronald Reagan once asked: "Okay, you've shown me the manure, now where's the pony?" At a pivotal moment in history, the nation's CEOs — who are always the most lagging indicators of business conditions — are in economic distress. Okay, so show us the pony. If our CEOs took the time to look closely at the latest batch of economic data, they'd see green fields rather than manure — and they'd quit their handwringing. Core retail sales, including merchandise and department stores and excluding autos, are much stronger than expected. With cooler fall weather, even apparel was up 4%...

The hit parade of corporate scandal isn't about money. It's about boredom. It's not about wealth. It's about loneliness. It's not about power. It's about insecurity. And it's not about greed. It's about unrealistic fantasy. So say top corporate psychologists, management experts and CEOs asked by USA TODAY to answer the simple question: Why? What motivates wealthy CEOs to steal from their companies? Take Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco, who, along with two others, has been charged with looting $600 million from the company. Or Andrew Fastow, former Enron CFO, who has been charged with masterminding schemes that officials...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Battery maker Rayovac Corp. plans to cut 630 jobs, or 14 percent of its worldwide work force, as it closes three plants and opens a $20 million facility in Illinois as part of a restructuring plan. The moves announced Thursday are expected to save the company $35 million to $40 million when fully realized in the fiscal year 2005. Rayovac employs 4,500 workers worldwide. The company said it would eliminate 280 jobs at a Madison packaging center and a Middleton distribution center, both of which will shut...

Each day brings more bad news for U.S. capitalism -- another top executive under investigation or yet another accounting scandal. But some of America's top business leaders have decided to take action to prevent such scandals from happening again, to repair the reputations of big corporations and to restore confidence in the stock market and the economy. And while there's a remarkable consensus about what needs to be done, their proposals aren't without controversy. Two of America's oldest and most respected business groups -- the Business Roundtable and the Conference Board -- have put forth voluntary reforms companies should adopt...

Companies Dig Deeper Into Executives' Pasts By ALEX KUCZYNSKI The nation's major corporations, facing a tide of public suspicion and investor mistrust, are responding by vetting candidates for top positions as never before, looking into all aspects of their professional and private lives with an intensity usually reserved for major criminal investigations or Park Avenue co-op board applications. Public companies are hiring accounting, security and investigative firms to pore over court documents, search federal databases and interview long-lost college girlfriends, ex-husbands and former employers. "What we do is everything short of 24-hour surveillance," said Robert Strang, executive vice president of...

Make Pinocchio CEOs Pay By ROGER LOWENSTEIN This was a tough week for corporate CEOs. They had to swear under oath that the numbers they are reporting to investors are actually true. I suppose you could call it putting your mouth where other people's money is. This provision of the newly enacted corporate reform law has gotten loads of ink, as well it should. CEOs could be criminally liable for bearing false witness. We can only hope that the requirement to truth-tell does not represent a trend, else so many other institutions, such as politics and matrimony not to mention...

After almost a year of accounting scandals, plummeting stocks and disgraced corporate executives comes what many hope, and some fear, will be a day of reckoning. By Aug. 14, the chief executive officers and chief financial officers of almost a thousand of America's largest corporations must swear to the accuracy of their company's books to the Securities and Exchange Commission. If all goes as planned, those declarations should reveal the true state of corporate finances and, at the very least, remove some of the uncertainty that has spooked the stock markets. But some analysts fear that the new requirements won't...

<p>It was just a coincidence that Joe Nacchio, the former chief executive of Qwest, a big regional telecommunications company, cashed out more than $200 million worth of stock while his company, as the current management now says, was misrepresenting its financial condition to investors during the past several years.</p>

Perhaps I am too cynical, but I believe there is a separate class of people in this country called Too Rich to Go to Prison. With the peerless John Ashcroft at the helm of the Justice Department, I don't think any of the now-infamous CEOs need to lose sleep over the prospect. It's not exactly like Bobby Kennedy going after Jimmy Hoffa. On the other hand, the only AG we've got did instigate a 13-month-long undercover investigation that resulted in the arrest of 12 prostitutes in New Orleans. Amazing - they found 12 whores in New Orleans. Surely Osama bin...

July 11, 2002 Cubicle Crimes By SCOTT ADAMS ANVILLE, Calif. — Apparently, without anyone's noticing, our entire universe collapsed into a black hole and emerged in another dimension where everything is backward: Bill Gates (who used to be evil) is spending billions to vaccinate children in third-world countries, while the Catholic Church (which used to be good) is defending priests accused of molesting children. The stock market (which used to go up) now only drifts downward. And the surest way to lose respect is to mention you started a dot-com. But here's the strangest backwardism of all: People seem surprised...

Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border San Antonio, Texas (Reuters) Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense. "They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. "Right in front of my daughters." Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted...

The corporate world is now embroiled in two controversies. There's the fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and elsewhere; and there's the payment of absurd sums to CEOs. Both developments threaten the free-market system--you're kidding yourself if you don't think that big firms deliberately duping investors, or CEOs awarding themselves hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to stockholders, does anything other than erode the reputation of market economics. Both practices also trample important principles of conservative economics, as we'll see in a moment. But the two controversies really aren't separate--they are one and the same. The motive...

Texas(Rooters): Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border San Antonio, Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense. "They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. "Right in front of my daughters." Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last...