http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080102.CEOS02/TPStory/?query=Julian+Beltrame
Average Canadians work for shillings while CEOs make a killing
OTTAWA -- It's 10:33 a.m. on the first day of work after New Year's Day. Do you know how much your boss has earned so far this year?
If he or she is a top Canadian CEO and you are an average Canadian worker, about as much as you will make all year.
According to a new analysis of escalating CEO compensation compiled by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the average of the 100 highest-paid Canadian chief executives working for a publicly traded company earned $8,528,000 and chump change in 2006, compared to the average salary of $38,998 for people who aren't CEOs.
That means it will take little more than nine hours for the average boss in most large Canadian firms to earn what an average Canadian earns all year, or more precisely 10:33 a.m. Jan. 2 if it is assumed both were paid for the New Year's statutory holiday and got to work at 9 a.m.
The analysis by the Toronto-based think tank, an independent non-partisan research institute, contains some eye-popping comparisons.
For instance, the best paid CEO in the top-100 club earned close to $55-million in 2006, while a $3-million paycheque only got you into the club as a bottom dweller.
It would take just 64 of these CEOs to match the earning power of Brandon, Man., population 41,500.
Canada's top CEOs now make 218 times as much as the average Canadian full-time worker, compared with only 104 times as much in 1998.
The disparity may even be greater, argues the paper, if you consider large private companies or public firms that paid large salaries to executives other than their chief executives.
For instance Magna International founder Frank Stronach, who was chairman but not CEO of Canada's largest auto parts company, was paid more than $27-million (U.S.) in 2006, according to the group.
"I think you would probably have to go back to the robber baron era in North America during the late 1880s and early 1900s to find similar disparities," said Hugh Mackenzie, a former steelworker union official and researcher with the group, who wrote the report, entitled The Great CEO Pay Race.
The paper, made public yesterday, is similar to other advocacy reports from business critics and academics who, in the wake of corporate accounting scandals a few years ago, have criticized the way North American CEOs are compensated. Many critics point to Europe, which has lagged behind the United States and Canada in terms of exorbitant executive compensation.
Despite the criticism, not a great deal has changed in the system, except that compensation committees of corporate boards who approve CEO salaries are under more scrutiny from shareholders, unions and other corporate stakeholders.
As well, some mutual funds and institutional investors concerned about corporate performance have sought limits on executive compensation at company annual meetings.
John Mack, CEO of Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley, recently gave up his bonus for the year after the company took a $9.4-billion writedown linked to the U.S. subprime mortgage mess.
Proponents of the current system argue that CEO compensation is linked to corporate performance and stock options can inflate overall pay by millions of dollars when exercised during the kind of booming stock market we have seen in recent years.
As well, many executives - former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli and Pfizer ex-chief Hank McKinnell, for example - had pre-negotiated employment packages that guaranteed huge severance payments if they were fired or left their company early.
Mr. Mackenzie said the figures show that there has been an explosion in CEO compensation, particularly since the mid-1990s, when regulators in Ontario and elsewhere began requiring public disclosure of CEO salaries and compensation paid to other top executives of publicly traded companies.
As well, the consolidation and globalization of industries in North America helped influence Canada's salary market for executives by what was happening in the United States.
"It appears to have had something to do with the fact that the market for chief executive officers became significantly an international market in the 1990s and the salary levels in the U.S. tended to slip over [into Canada]," he said.
"All it takes is one or two Canadian companies doing really well after hiring a high-profile American chief executive officer and others start to do it, and that tends to drive up the general level of CEO salaries."
Whether the CEOs are worth their weight in gold is a subjective matter, Mr. Mackenzie concedes, but adds: "Most of them are not Jim Balsillie of RIM [Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry]. Most are the corporate equivalent of rent-a-cops who come in for a short time and to suggest the wealth of these large corporations are created by one individual is ridiculous."
No comments:
Post a Comment