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kpmcc

And while they cut pension benefits, this is what the CEO makes:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/new-ge-ceo-larry-culp-inks-s...

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Was just about to link the same article. It's sickening how much these CEO's make.

For those who want the stats from the SEC[0]:

  (1) a base salary of $2,500,000 per year.

  (2) a target annual bonus opportunity at 150% of base salary ($3,750,000).

  (3) annual equity awards in the form of performance share units (“PSUs”) 
      that will have grant date fair values of $15,000,000, beginning in 2019.

  (4) a one-time inducement award of PSUs that will pay out [...] as a number of 
      GE shares ranging from 2.5 million to 7.5 million shares, based on a GE stock 
      price appreciation target ranging from 50% to 150% using the highest average 
      closing price over 30 consecutive trading days during the four-year period from 
      October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2022, with no payout for stock price appreciation 
      of less than 50% (This could net him $47,000,000 - $233,000,000!).

  (5) cash severance in an amount equal to two times the sum of Mr. Culp’s base salary 
      and target annual bonus opportunity, in the event that his employment is terminated 
      by the Company without cause or by Mr. Culp for good reason.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/00000405451800...

It says his compensation is largely tied to company stock performance. He is not guaranteed all of that money. He and the company have to perform.

And shares rose on the news of the pension cuts.

It's not hard to play this game, if your incentive is to make the stock price go up.

Slash and burn.

Stock is up 3% on this news, and no doubt will be up on future news of cuts to headcount, benefits, etc. So there's a conflict of interest here.

I believe the "conflict" is called class warfare.

Conflict of interest? Isn’t the interest of a business survival and profit?

Those are examples of business interests, but if any business that doesn't care about the physical and financial wellbeing of its workers is a business we are better off without.

"We made a profit" is never an excuse for unethical/immoral business dealings.

> doesn't care about the physical and financial wellbeing of its workers is a business we are better off without

I think this is a very simplistic view.

I don't know enough about this particular case with GE, but sometimes layoffs are absolutely required for a business to continue existing, especially when the economic cycle dips a bit low. This is almost an absolute for smaller businesses.

For these cases, what do you suggest? Close the doors, laying off all workers, or lay off some, allowing the rest of the workers to continue their employment?

Something like "Sorry, you're all out of work because we don't want to lay off some of you" seems a bit self destructive, with a much more negative result.

>Stock is up 3% on this news

What? According to google finance, the stock closed $8.57 last Friday, opened $8.55 today, reached an intra-day high of $8.65, and closed at $8.56. There's no way you can say that it was up 3%.

Literally what it says in the article.

You know how you raise the stock price when you're a CEO? You get a tax cut from 35% down to 21% with the nominal purpose being so your company can hire more workers (to handle the business that was previously not profitable enough to cover their wages?), then you use that money for stock buybacks.

Less supply of your stock plus a deep pocketed purchaser? It's bonus time!

Okay look, I get that it’s fun to be angry the high salaries of CEOs but it’s one of those things that just doesn’t matter and does nothing but distract from the actual problems. That 2.5 million dollars distributed to the 20k pensioners amounts to $125/person/year. If you distribute it to all $300k GE employees they get a $6/yr raise.

That $2.5M isn't even half of their compensation. Why did you pick the lowest figure in the article to make this argument?

So double it or even triple it. You could redistribute it all among the 20k people impacted and we are till only talking about $20 - $30 per month. That would certainly help people, but it isn't going to by life changing money.

CEO pay seems like a constant red herring. If we care about inequality, we are probably better off focusing our attention on our tax system (this story [1] is also on the front page of HN at the moment) which has a much bigger impact than CEO pay.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21181664

Why double or triple it? His actual guaranteed package is closer to $68MM[1], which is closer to 20x or 30x.

[1] with the potential to hit $250MM.

What's even worse is how much dividends they've paid out to shareholders. $394 million this year and $3.23 billion last year, if my math is right. Before that they paid out $4 billion a year, but they reduced it in December, 2018.

A rounding error compared to the billions owed to pensioners.

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