The pay packages of top executives of the largest U.S. corporations set another record in 2021, reaching a median value of $ 14.7 million. This is the tenth consecutive year that median compensation has increased and the sixth consecutive year of record setting packages for chief executive officers (CEOs) of leading U.S. companies.
According to a Wall Street Journal analysis published Monday, the total compensation of CEOs of more than 400 companies in the S&P 500 will rise 12 percent in 2021. The Diary The study also said that “most companies recorded an annual shareholder return of nearly 30 percent.”
With a median total package value of $ 14.7 million, the analysis reported that $ 10.6 million consisted of equity awards, that is, non-cash payments in the form of various company stock options. The balance of $ 4.1 million in the CEO’s median package is in the form of salaries, bonuses and other cash compensation.
By 2020, the median CEO package will be worth $ 13.4 million, and the cash share will be $ 3.1 million. In other words, while workers in nearly every U.S. industry saw a reduction in real wages in 2021 due to an inflation rate of 7 percent, the cash portion of the median CEO’s compensation rose 32.3 percent.
Like everything related to the accumulation of so much wealth in the high levels of American capitalist society, massive equity and cash compensation packages are awarded to a handful at the top end of the Diary rankings, and this exclusive club is growing. The analysis says, “Nine CEOs received pay packages worth at least $ 50 million last year — up from seven in 2020 and one in 2016.”
At the top of the list is Peter M. Kern of the Expedia Group who earned $ 296.25 million in 2021, an increase of a whopping 6,952 percent from 2020. Kern took over the online travel shopping company in April 2020 when the travel and industry pandemic devastated of tourism around the world. Since the Expedia Group crashed on Wall Street at the time, the company’s stock has more than doubled to its pre -pandemic level.
As if there was a difference, the Diary Equity awards are said to make up almost all of Kern’s package, and these assets won’t start giving away until 2024 “at the very least.” The CEO of Expedia Group “is not expected to receive additional equity during his three -year employment contract,” according to a company spokesman.
Second on the CEO pay package list is David Zaslav, the longtime CEO of Discovery Inc. and now the new Warner Bros. joint. Discovery, Inc., which received a total pay package of $ 246 million, an increase of 554 percent from the previous year. Of this amount, 82 percent, or $ 203 million, is in the form of an option grant “dependent on the stock price at least doubling from current levels prior to December 2027.”
However, the Diary reported that Zaslav received a total of $ 30.5 million in cash compensation. The executive began his leadership of the new media conglomerate — AT&T’s WarnerMedia merger with Discovery — by announcing $ 3 billion in cuts he says are needed to eliminate “overlap” and to establish a company with “more few layers. ” Zaslav is fully aware that attacking workers, with median incomes 3,000 times smaller than the CEO, is the surest way to improve Wall Street’s performance and get him his $ 200 million.
Third on the list is Bill McDermott of ServiceNow, a software company that provides cloud computing services. McDermott’s 2021 package is worth $ 165 million, an increase of 560 percent over the previous year, and its share of the money is $ 3.57 million. McDermott has a $ 139.2 million option award that requires the company’s stock value to rise by half and that the company reach subscription revenue targets.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Wall Street’s most important company at $ 2.5 trillion, comes next with a total package worth $ 98.73 million and cash compensation of $ 15 million. Cook, who has not received an equity award since 2011, received nearly $ 84 million in options in recognition of “his exceptional leadership and commensurate with the size, performance and profitability that Apple has achieved during his tenure.” Apple ended 2021 with revenue of $ 94.7 billion.
Cook is followed by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon with a total pay package of $ 84.43 million, of which $ 6.5 million is salary and other cash compensation. Ang Diary Dimon said it “will have to wait at least five years to exercise the company’s options worth $ 52.6 million, nearly two-thirds of its $ 84.4 million in reported salary in 2021, and hold the resulting share of at least in another five years. “
As the leading voice of the US financial elite, the Wall Street Journal It describes the increasingly frightening accumulation of wealth at the top of society as a result of victory for the winners in the ranks of the capitalist class during “a turbulent year that began with Covid-19 disrupting operations and weakening demand and ended with an economic recovery that has left many U.S. companies scrambling for workers and trying to stay ahead of rising inflation. ”
While the Diary seeing the equity portion of profitable compensation awards as a kind of “performance” requirement for very wealthy executives, the dirty little secret behind the 30 percent return most companies earned in 2021 is that it hasn’t Wall Street’s rise was fueled by the infusion of trillions of dollars into U.S. Federal Reserve markets.
While the Diary expresses a happy attitude towards the increase in pay package data, very little is said about the decline in financial markets since the beginning of 2022, the increase in inflation rate to 8.5 percent, the Federal Reserve interest rate policies or the volatility in bond prices, all of which are indications of the rising instability of the entire financial system.
.