All of a sudden, people care about executive pay

Posted Nov 15th 2008 8:40AM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Management, Financial Crisis

A survey of 800 registered voters conducted by Public Strategies found that 63% of Americans are "much more concerned" with the debate on executive compensation than they were a year ago and 33% are "somewhat more concerned."

Some 80% have an unfavorable opinion of the chief executives of big banks. What's amazing to me is that 20% don't! 89% want to see some sort of clawback provision to allow companies to recoup funds paid to executives whose firms later collapsed.

This would seem to provide Congress with all the mandate it needs to implement very stringent pay controls on the companies participating in the bailout. If the taxpayers are being asked to provide more than $700 billion to the banks and they want executive pay controls to be part of that, then what's the question? Any bank that doesn't need the money that badly is free to reject it. It's a win-win!

Any rational argument against imposing restrictions on executive pay went out the window when the bailout bill was passed.

Tags: banking regulation, executive compensation, Executive pay, Public Strategies

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

11-15-2008 @ 11:07AM

LM said...

Executive Compensation for the highest paid employee (usually the CEO) should be limited (at least in the companies who receive "bailout" funds) to 200% of the average of ALL the W-2 employees in the company and its "subsidiaries".
That should include any severance (golden handcuff) packages and stock options. The value of stock options should be valued at the differential between the strike price and the average of the four quarterly closing prices during a year.

This would encourage companies to employ more full-time employees, with the same or better requirements for participation in health plans and retirement plans. The values of the benefits plans (that are paid in cash, not those that are "soft" like free parking and vacations) should/could be included as "wages" only for purposes of determining the CEO salary. So, if I pay my average employee $40,000 a year in cash wages, and give him or her $10,000 a year toward health insurance and/or 401(k) matching, I can draw a $10 million salary max......... Sounds reasonable to me. Maybe there could be some other factor in there for the actual NUMBER of employees the company has.......

These "rules" could be applied only (or on a different basis) for companies who have taxpayers' money as part of their capital structure, including "loans"........