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aceventura3 · 02-11-2009, 07:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

you want a more comprehensive indication of my general position on ceo salary levels as a massive misallocation of resources, read the report i posted above.

How about a little further definition of context by answering a couple of questions. How do you define "a massive misallocation of resources?" Who determines if resources are misallocated? Where is the threshold for "a massive misallocation of resources?"

Never mind about answering the questions related to a topic, why not tell me more about me and my failings. Since you are not really interested but continually tell us how you are not interested...

Or, how about some infotainment from one of my biased sources of information. This one is interesting:

Quote:

Strip-Club Chief Is What Obama Could Afford With Bank-Pay Limit
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By Tom Randall, Alex Nussbaum and Peter Robison

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Eric Langan could run a U.S. bank, based on his $494,713 salary last year, according to President Barack Obama. Langan would rather stay in his job, overseeing 18 strip clubs as chief executive officer of Rick’s Cabaret International Inc.

“A bank? No. I’m not interested in working for a bank,” Langan said in a telephone interview from his office in Houston. Besides, he just got a raise to $600,000, putting him $100,000 over Obama’s cap for a top official of a financial institution receiving federal bailout funds.

A half-million dollars may not buy a seasoned executive for a major U.S. financial institution, said James Reda, managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consultant in New York. Linda McMahon, whose World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. produces the syndicated television show “WWE Friday Night Smackdown,” would make the cut, as would CEOs of a cafeteria company and discount online retailer.

On Wall Street, “$500,000 will get you someone five years out of Harvard Business School or a sixth-year associate at a major law firm,” Reda said. “It’s not going to get you a lot.”

Just 14 CEOs in the Fortune 1000 and five from the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index make under the $500,000 bar, according to Equilar Inc., which analyzes compensation data. Many of those are founders or major shareholders, such as Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs, who gets a $1 annual salary and owns about $550 million in stock.

CEOs coming in under the Obama ceiling managed companies with a median market value of $182.6 million and sales of $152.6 million in 2007, Redwood Shores, California-based Equilar said.

‘So Complicated’

The heads of the five biggest Wall Street firms took home more than $1 billion in the five years through 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bank of America Corp., the nation’s largest lender that purchased broker Merrill Lynch & Co., was worth $35.4 billon yesterday.

“These mega-banks just live in a different universe,” said Tony Gorrell, chief financial officer of closely held Sutton Bank of Attica, Ohio, which has nine branches. His salary is “not even close” to reaching the half-million mark, Gorrell said.

“I think Citibank’s so complicated that you’d need a lot more than that to run it,” he said.

Citigroup Inc. had 323,000 employees at the end of last year and 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries. The company hasn’t released CEO Vikram S. Pandit’s 2008 salary.

Pandit, who took the job in December 2007, got 1 million shares as part of a “sign-on” bonus in January 2008 in addition to a $2.5 million “retention equity award,” Citigroup said.

Restricted Shares Allowed

Pandit also received $165 million in 2007 when he sold Old Lane Partners LP, the New York hedge fund he co-founded. Citigroup closed Old Lane in June and took a $202 million writedown on its $800 million investment.

Pandit’s predecessor, Charles O. “Chuck” Prince, earned $15.1 million in 2007.

The $500,000 rule applies to banks that receive capital injections under the program outlined by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday, and not to the 361 financial institutions that already received Troubled Asset Relief Program aid. They paid their CEOS an average $3.65 million annually, Equilar said. Those with assets above $10 billion gave their chiefs an average $11 million, the firm said.

The rules announced by Obama on Feb. 4 limit total compensation, including salary, bonus and stock. Awards of restricted shares, which can’t be sold until taxpayers are paid back with interest, are allowed. Perks including country club memberships and use of corporate jets aren’t banned, according to the Treasury Department.

‘Obscene Bonuses’

For many top officers, “base pay is the smallest part of their compensation, at the largest companies anyway,” said Vineeta Anand, chief research analyst at the AFL-CIO, a Washington-based labor federation that supports pay limits.

Restricted stock would give a CEO a shot at a big payday, said Jonathan Johnson, who made $250,000 last year as president of Overstock.com Inc., a discount online retailer based in Salt Lake City. A $500,000 maximum seems reasonable given some Wall Street executives’ “obscene bonuses,” Johnson said.

A corporate leader grossing $500,000 would earn about $300,000 after taxes, said Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, a New York-based market researcher.

The executive might afford a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in Manhattan worth about $1.5 million, rather than a multimillion-dollar suburban mansion, he said.

“Instead of having several maids, they’re going to have one,” Pedraza said.

A $770,000 Median

The U.S. government has limited compensation before. In October, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson barred tax deductions on salaries greater than $500,000 a year at companies receiving TARP assistance. In 1993, Congress outlawed writing off more than $1 million.

Compensation went up anyway, said Carola Frydman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology finance professor who studies compensation.

Median yearly pay was about $770,000 for executives at the largest U.S. companies in the 1950s, Frydman said in a telephone interview from her office in Cambridge. The median jumped to $2.36 million in the 1990s and $4.08 million in the first half of this decade.

CEOs with paychecks of less than $500,000 a year include McMahon of Stamford, Connecticut-based World Wrestling Entertainment and Christopher Pappas, who runs Luby’s Inc., a cafeteria-style restaurant chain in Houston.

A Pay Cut

McMahon, who made $498,227 in 2007, has been nominated to the Connecticut Board of Education and is too busy to answer questions, said her spokesman, Robert Zimmerman. Pappas, who gets a $400,000 annual salary, also declined to comment, said spokesman Rick Black.

Brookdale Senior Living Inc. CEO Bill Sheriff would have qualified, until the Brentwood, Tennessee-based network of 550 assisted-living centers and retirement communities boosted his $200,000 salary to $600,000 on Jan. 1. The increase made up for a drop in dividends, spokesman Ross Roadman said.

John Dicus, CEO of Capitol Federal Financial in Topeka, Kansas, made about $835,000 last year running the holding company for the 40-branch Capital Federal Savings Bank and isn’t interested in taking a pay cut to head a Fortune 500 bank, he said.

“I’m sure some people will do it,” Dicus said. “If you put too many strings on the banks, they might not be successful.”

Langan, CEO of Rick’s Cabaret, said he doubts any of the dancers at his Rick’s Cabaret, Club Onyx, XTC Cabaret or Tootsie’s night clubs would seek new careers in finance.

“I’ve got girls making over a quarter of a million a year in New York,” he said.

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

You have to admit, that's some funny stuff.

-----Added 11/2/2009 at 11 : 03 : 24-----

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

Here's the market "punishing" executives for failure again:

Circuit City wants to pay execs bonuses | InsideNova.com

so yeah, that's $2.3 million split 16 ways if the executives who mis-managed the company into non-existence "meet their goals" (HA HA HA) while the remaining $750k will be split among the other 34,000 employees.

Viva the Free Market Economy!

They should have unionized, or got into management.