NEW YORK, June 9, 2007
It Pays (A Lot) To Be A CEO
Half Of America's Top Executives Make More Than $8.3M A Year
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Terry Semel, CEO and chairman of Yahoo!, Inc., led the CEO pack with total compensation last year of $71.7 million. (AP)
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In The Spotlight CEO Wealthmeter Chart the biggest winners and losers in the business world.
Plus, the eventual payouts from stock options handed to CEOs could be substantially higher in future years if the overall market keeps floating most stock boats higher.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way.
This was expected to be the year that investor anger over pay boiled over. After Home Depot Inc.'s Robert Nardelli and Pfizer Inc.'s Henry A. McKinnell left their battered companies with golden parachutes worth $210 million and nearly $200 million, respectively, shareholder activists entered proxy season this spring primed for a showdown on pay and outsized retirement packages. It didn't happen.
Most annual meetings were quiet affairs. Shareholders did win votes giving them a say in executive compensation at Verizon Communications Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Motorola Inc.
But mutual funds largely backed companies in voting against the initiatives, a poor portent for their future success at slowing the growth of executive compensation.
A recent report by the Congressional Research Service helps to put the executive pay issue into a real-world context. CEOs make, on average, 179 times as much as rank and file workers, double the 90-to-1 ratio in 1994, according to the agency's calculations.
If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as CEO pay since 1990, it would be worth $22.61 today, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Instead, the federal minimum wage will increase to $5.85 an hour on July 24, the first increase in a decade.
CEOs are also much richer than lower-level executives at their own companies. The Hay Group, a compensation consulting company, estimates that the average CEO makes 2.5 times more than the average executive in base pay.
The SEC's new disclosure rules also mandate narratives, in plain English, explaining how pay decisions are reached. But a study of the disclosures by Clarity Communications found that most failed to meet readability standards many states require for insurance forms.
"Why is it that a CEO gets compensated in such a discombobulating fashion when the average worker gets a paycheck and can tell immediately what it's about? ... If you're an investor and you get your (proxy) statement and it just goes on for pages and pages of the different methods used to pay the CEO, at some point you have to ask yourself why. 'Why don't I get all this?"' said Dominic Jones, Clarity's president.
Still, if the process around pay is inching its way toward something that looks more democratic, executive pay may be one area where gravity doesn't apply.
Said John Wilcox, head of corporate governance at retirement system TIAA-CREF, which manages more than $410 billion: "Once it's up there, it's very hard to pull it down again."
ELLEN SIMON
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The secrets of tennis legend 
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See all 33 CommentsBecause of this, I really don't understand why the CEO of Yahoo is getting a lot of money, if he is not doing correctly his job.
This amount of money can be given to CEOs of Google, Apple, and other companies that are really doing very good their job.
For example Steve Jobs is doing amazing work at apple, he is a man that really deserves to receive payments like this ones.
Why aren't there answers? It is NOT about retraining because other news articles are saying how it costs ____ less to do it in ____. They're avoiding the core problem: Cost of living in America, along with the wages, is why America is losing its competitive edge. If anybody is truly being serious about wanting to make America competitive in a global environment, then it's d@mningly obvious what has to be done: Equalize the costs. Until then, who is going to spend a large 5 figure loan (or more) for education to get a job that pays a smaller 5 figure income that would likely be offshored because it could be done in a cheaper country anyway?
Something isn't adding up. President Bush isn't responsible, but even he knows "retraining" isn't the solution. More and more types of jobs are seen as being able to be offshored. It hasn't happened yet but it's going to if the CORE problems don't get fixed. And that's what President Bush CAN do.
...in trade deficits
...in health care costs
...in job losses for both skilled and un-skilled laborers
...in energy costs
...and most of all, the long term health of this planet's environment that will have to be suffered by this generation's children, grand children, and beyond (for those who care, which is sadly too few).
The biggest oxymoron in the english language today:
FREE MARKET
This is perverted rhetoric. So how about free football games, no rules, let's watch the players literlly stab each other in the backs, spill some blood, spray bullets on the field to score a touchdown then. Hell let the sociopaths run amock because it is them who "win" in this "free" market society.
Jane, I wouldn't give a rat's azz how much they made if I knew they weren't raping a pillaging, gutting pension plans, hiring illegal labor, taking companies into bankruptcy to scr*w creditors, feeing consumers to death and union busting. They've not proven themselves to be fair to the American worker many of whom have built and whose families have built the very companies they're ravaging.
No, that's what happens in a de-regulated, profit at any cost, demoralized, illegal, govt. approved,greedy free for all.
The sad part is, the big fish can eat all the little ones. It then has to eat itself in the end after all the little ones are nothing left than disintegrated bones. It's not a very bright way to run a society, but nothing's perfect... Once big biz is done with us, and decades down the road when they take a leak on India's and China's populations as well, hopefully we'll be intergalactic so we can go offshore to Calufrax...
Oh gee, boo frigging hoo, at over a mil. a week I think they can handle it.
Fine, then they can take their stressed out azzes and their American worker backbreaking corps. and move tehm to India. S.c.r.e.w. them. We will fill the void with our own small businesses. F.them and F. people like you who care not about the avg. American.
And another reason why it's not competition: It's migration.
Indeed, for all the whining people make over Dell's bad product quality, Apple's awful India helpdesk support and numerous other examples, the jobs aren't coming back here where we (had) competent personnel.
Until America's local economy is globalized to match India's and China's, I just cannot believe we're competing with anybody. It's about greed.
One other thing - Michigan's cars. Is it solely the assembly that's awful? Or the PARTS? Where do the parts come from? China? I wish it was as simply as bashing the USA so readily. It isn't.
winnerindia - Gates was also arrested in 1977 for a charge that has since been "lost". Funny, that... And he's shrewd. In a business sense.
Screw you ***!!!!!!!
What?
Look at Detroit. They make shi**y cars. They charge too much. They have Unions that gouge their own workers and pass the high prices on to consumers that, in turn, say Bite Me, and buy Japanese. It is not the CEOs Pal, they don't operate in a vacuum. The CEO answers to a Board and too the shareholders. If you want to vent, vent on them. At least get the right target in your crosshairs.
If you don't like credit card fees then don't use the card. If you can't afford that big screen TV, that fishing boat and that new pick-up, hey, maybe you shouldn't buy it.
I doubt they'll rot in hell. Every day for these guys is hell. A million problems all day long. Have you ever heard the expression, "you couldn't pay me enough..."? Try managing even 5 people - what a nightmare. Especially 5 folks like you with an ax to grind.
Oh please, need I remind you that Bush has an MBA and is a former CEO, and we all know how his presidency has turned out.
No. No. Yes. Yes. Why?
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