Saturday Odd Bits Roundup: Executive Compensation
by Miki Saxon
There’s not a lot of funny stuff out there today, but if you have a slightly twisted sense of humor you can find more funny stuff than you would think.
First up is compensation at AIG. In October the company spent just shy of a half a million dollars on a weekend meeting at a resort; when people got annoyed they canceled another 160 events valued around $8 million. A month later, in return for their bailout the top seven execs in the ‘Leadership Group’ (isn’t that a laugh) agreed to skip bonuses this year or salary increases through 2009 and CEO is taking an annual salary of $1.00. Whoo hoo. Of course, nothing I looked at mentioned a ban on stock options.
Next is a topic close to my heart. I love seeing common knowledge written up, especially when it’s common knowledge that the pundits keep refuting. BNET’s Dog and Pony spells out ten reasons that middle managers are more valuable than CEOs. Why? Because they’re the folks who drive customer retention.
Finally, I found a report entitled Executive Excess 2008 from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. “S&P 500 CEOs last year averaged $10.5 million, 344 times the pay of typical American workers. Compensation levels for private investment fund managers soared even further out into the pay stratosphere. Last year, the top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers averaged $588 million each, more than 19,000 times as much as typical U.S. workers earned.” I’m not saying that they’re completely impartial, but then, who is? Every group that publishes a study has its own ax to grind. It’s your responsibility to sort it out.
Image credit: flickr
