If you read the paragraph which you say I am attributing 'attributing JC Penny's 32% loss to the CEO' then you will find that I was talking about it being unpredictable when a new CEO is hired, he had a good track record at apple before he ballsed it up at J.C. Penny by not taking into account that the customer demographic was different, he just went with the one thing that worked for him before. And no, what I said doesn't support the claim of Gizi because showing someone can destroy or damage a company does not show they can run one excellently, or that a high paid CEO will run one better than someone who is willing to work that job for substantially less.

Here is an article that shows that higher pay only increases performance until a point, then performance drops: http://eganassociates.com.au/high-ceo-pay-inspires-better-pe... These results came from data that compared CEO remuneration to average employee remuneration. This directly contradicts what Gizi was proposing, because the real world data shows a negative correlation between CEO pay and performance after a point. The full paper is available here http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2529112 if anyone is interested in it.

Consider the GFC, it shows how well upper management really stuffed things up at the largest companies and still got away with it, no problems, still getting huge payouts for sub par leadership. Yet when things go well, the CEO gets bonuses for things that may have had nothing to do with them. Random fluctuations are wrongfully attributed to CEOs, and they get hefty bonuses for it as well. Here is a study that shows this http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151022192337.ht... , unfortunately the original source is behind a paywall so I am not linking it.