Larry Ellison, the chief executive at Oracle, pulled in a cool 92 million pounds in exercised stock earnings in addition to salary last year. Howard D. Schultz, CEO of Starbucks scored a salary plus stock options that topped 50 million pounds.
AC Milan’s Kaka is expected to gross (only?) 7.5 million pounds this year, and chances are the aforementioned chief executives will be spending more time at the top of their careers than the footballer. Physical ability tends to peak at some point, while CEO salaries…don’t.
It’s a competitive corporate market, and CEOs are the new celebrities. These demigods of commerce are usually made up of a face, a known name, and a paycheck that sparks shareholder controversy.
Studies suggest that the share value of a company can be correlated to the “value” of its chief executive officer. This is part of what nailed Nardelli, the highly criticised former CEO of Home Depot. Yet despite Nardelli’s short, less than shiny record at the head of that somewhat shaky ship, the man got a sweet send-off to the tune of 210 million US dollars, over 106 million pounds. Now that is heavy censorship.
CEOs are more and more the superstar, scapegoat, and celebrity of the modern corporation. They trade in trust and infamy, linking their own reputations to the firms they represent. A lot of the value of a CEO is tied up in his visibility. One has to wonder, who’s the buzziest of the big business men, and in relation to which topics? And just how is that affecting share price? Or company brands and products?
At Attentio, measurement is underway…
