OT: Public referrendums on destroying evil companies

[macjimmy]

A large part of executive pay comes from stock options, right? At least, during the stock boom of the late 90s options were the bulk of executive compensation plans. The idea being, that a profitable company = a sucsessful company. Of course, the American way is to hire a team of lawyers to analyze the rules and systems and find the best ways to exploit them, so stock options eventually started leading to companies taking drastic short cuts, using creative accounting practices, selling unsafe products, and shredding the evedince of these activities. Taking illegal shortcuts raises corporate profits, thereby raising stock prices and executive pay. So maybe doing away with stock options as compensation would have a positive effect on corporate behavior. Just my 2 cents worth of rant.

[Growltigger]

Macjimmy, you are quite right that option schemes, and phantom option schemes, used to be a fair percentage of director's remunerations.

This is less the case these days, where the bulk of remuneration packages come from guaranteed bonueses irrespective of whether or not the company performs.

It sometimes seems that the rationale is

Success should be rewarded
Failure should be compensated!

[macjimmy]

I don't understand the reasoning for options then, and bonuses now. Why not just pay executives a larger salary than everyone else? I know they already do get larger salaries than average employees, but then it is combined with all of this doublespeak for money. Just increase their salaries. And while I'm here, what about the practice of creating offshore accounts to evade income taxes? I am under the impression that this is a fairly common practice among larger corporations and richer individuals who can afford accountants and lawyers to set up things like this. I remember when Enron & pals were big in the news that there was some talk about trying to fix it, but like the rest of corporate reform, it has been drowned out in the flood of news from Iraq, Afganistan, and Kobe Bryant.

Ahhh, someone shut me up

[ October 28, 2003, 15:03: Message edited by: macjimmy ]

[Growltigger]

Macjimmy, the clever executive will get a salary, but benchmarked at a level that hopefully wont upset the shareholders too much.

He will then get bonuses, discretionary and non-discretionary.

He will also get pension contributions.

Add then stock options and some sexy advanced payment mechanism to get money paid offshore to avoid taxes as a "sweetener" and then your average board chappie is wealthier than Croesus

Oh, and the clever ones negotiate golden handshakes and golden parachutes, so it makes it damn expensive to get rid of them.

Eg head of AstraZeneca in England, sack him? no worries, but that will be £38,000,000 please

[narf poit chez BOOM]

poverty isn't so much of a virtue as it's hard to be tempted to be arrogant about your wealth when you don't have any.

[Cyrien]

Hate to bring this topic to the top again... but in regards to GATOR and installing even when you say no. I just ran into that when I downloaded a DivX Codec. It popped up twice asking if I accepted the Gator install and Gator EULA. I said no. The Codec installed. I run a program that uses the Codec and... My firewall pops up asking if I want to allow a program titled Gain to connect to a website with Gator in the URL. I say block all connections from said application.
I ran Adaware. And... 29 Gator files, 2 Gator regkeys, 2 Gator Regvalues, 1 Gator Process.

So it seems that in at least a few cases, though probably not all. Gator will install even if you say no. And if they are willing to do that then they are probably willing to install without asking at all.

Now THAT fits my description of a sleazy company. Both Gator and the one allowing it to run in their software/downloads in such a misleading way.

[PvK]

Originally posted by deccan:

quote:

---

Originally posted by PvK:
I didn't mean to say that they should be destroyed if some people don't appreciate what they do.

Hey, PvK, you named the thread "Public referendums on destroying evil companies".

---

Non-appreciation is not the same thing as evil.

PvK