Can we talk CEO salaries?

[Tofer]

This article peaked my interest.

I understand that companies want "the best talent," but it pretty clear that "good enough" talent (except in extraordinary circumstances) is as good as any other in the top spot. I also understand that the board members who hire CEOs are, in many cases, CEOs themselves of other companies, and don't want to set precedent. But, it would be nice if some of the bigger companies just said, "We're going to hire someone great, and pay that person $500K per year, with bonuses for phenomenal work." For the right companies, they'd still get great talent and maybe some of these outlandish salaries would drop.

/rant

[Grace62]

I'm actually tired of the focus on CEO pay. We need to focus on labor. It's the differential between the pay of top executives and that of the rank and file that is hurting the most, in terms of economic competitiveness. It you've got $20 million to shell out to the CEO, then spread that love around a little more generously.

The American companies that are wooing the best people now with competitive salaries and benefits, even when the market says they don't have to, will be in far better shape once we return to a strong economy and the labor market gets tight again. And it will, sooner rather than later.

[cbelt3]

I can recall the last big economic downturn (early 1990's). The company I worked for initiated a 'progressive' wage scale program that meant that the newest people earned less than the people with more time on the job, even doing the same work.

It was horrible, and fortunately that idea only lasted about two years of the proposed 5 year plan. We then went back to the same methods of pay that had worked for 100 years. Pay for performance.

Grace, I'll agree with your point within limits. I agree that boards have a tendency to 'raid' the corporations for which they have a fiduciary responsibility. Shareholders can and should take appropriate action.

I wonder some times if there is a level of complicity among shareholder groups that allows this behavior to continue ?

[mrbigstuff]

OMG, not wealth redistribution. Again.

/sark

[rjmacs]

cbelt3 wrote:
I wonder some times if there is a level of complicity among shareholder groups that allows this behavior to continue ?

Look at the levels of interlocking directorates sometime. It's enough to get you thinking that maybe there's a network of rich people making decisions that ensure that other rich people stay rich and get richer. That's about as close as i come to conspiracy theory, but CEO pay doesn't seem to make business sense in the traditional way of measuring that concept.

[mattkime]

it take $5M to get me out of bed in the morning.

[Ted King]

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=cbelt3]
I wonder some times if there is a level of complicity among shareholder groups that allows this behavior to continue ?

Look at the levels of interlocking directorates sometime. It's enough to get you thinking that maybe there's a network of rich people making decisions that ensure that other rich people stay rich and get richer. That's about as close as i come to conspiracy theory, but CEO pay doesn't seem to make business sense in the traditional way of measuring that concept.
Compare executive salaries of American corporations in general with equally large corporations in Germany and Japan. In general they don't get paid nearly as much:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-07...lary-ratio

[Lux Interior]

rjmacs wrote:
Look at the levels of interlocking directorates sometime. It's enough to get you thinking that maybe there's a network of rich people making decisions that ensure that other rich people stay rich and get richer. That's about as close as i come to conspiracy theory, but CEO pay doesn't seem to make business sense in the traditional way of measuring that concept.

There's no conspiracy. It's pretty blatantly obvious. The boards set the CEO's compensation. Who sits on the board? Other CEOs. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Once you get into the inner circle, it's a circle jerk.

[max]

Ted King wrote: Compare executive salaries of American corporations in general with equally large corporations in Germany and Japan. In general they don't get paid nearly as much:

At one point In Germany, by law, no CEO, nobody at any one company could have been paid more than twenty times the salary of the lowest paid employee of the same company.
When we elected Obama, For Change,
when the Democrats were dumping ginormous money onto Wall Street,
I was hoping that our Socialists would attach the same strings to the largesse. It would set a nice precedent and an example to follow....