Best Buy pays up to lure new CEO

Hubert Joly / PR Newswire/AP

(AP) NEW YORK - Best Buy (BBY) is paying up for a turnaround.

Incoming CEO Hubert Joly will take home more than $15 million next year and stands to earn $16.5 million in stock grants over three years on top of salary and bonuses.

The nation's largest consumer electronics chain lured the turnaround expert with $20 million in "buyout awards" meant to compensate him for leaving benefits at his current job as CEO of Carlson, which owns Radisson hotels and the T.G.I. Friday's restaurant chain.

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Joly's pay package is on the high end, but not uncommon for a new CEO expected to lift a company out of the doldrums, according to Harry Schum, a senior consultant with Compensation Resources Inc.

Minnesota-based Best Buy has struggled against growing competition and customers' shift away from big computers and TVs and toward tablets and mobile phones.

[Nononameplease]

$15 million, plus $16.5 million in delayed benefits. All to inevitably run the company into the ground anyway.

Heck, I'd do it for $100k a year, plus $1 million when they fire me, or file for bankruptcy, whichever comes first. Might last 2-3 years, at that price!

[hypnotoad72]

So, will this dude be able to do it on his own, or will there need to be paying customers - preferably customers employed with living wage jobs and all that... if one has a money tree, then the CEO won't need anyone else's help. Until then, there's always more taxpayer-funded subsidy and maybe even some bailout money...