A good, full Twitter thread on this topic is here, and I did a LinkedIn thread on it here, which I am going to copy and paste below and put on CoSchedule to get a two-month run from it.
Before we do that: not all these situations are created the same. Some of these people came into corporations as “turnaround specialists,” achieved that goal, and got a big bonus as a result. There are other, differing incentives that people receive. I am also not arguing that executives should be paid like peons. Get paid. Get your nut. (That is often the focus of American capitalism.)
But, at a time with 30M or so unemployed and people facing hard decisions about their life, their kids, their careers, etc … some of these numbers are outright disgusting, especially in the context of how poorly the overall company has performed of late.
A snapshot:
Hertz: Laid off 60% of employees. $16M in bonuses to executives, including $700K to Paul Stone, who only started in May.
JCPenney: Essentially a penny stock these days and $4.3B in debt, but Jill Soltau (CEO) just got a $4.5M pop.
Libbey Inc.: Stock is at 14 cents. Shutting outlet stores left and right. No worries. Mike Bauer just got $900,000.
Frontier Communications: $17.5B in debt, just went bankrupt, and total exec bonuses paid were $37.7M.
Whiting Petroleum Corporation: Stock is down 77% this year. Brad Holly got $6.4M anyway.
Borden: $250M in debt, employs 3,300 people and just went bankrupt … and the execs got $4M in bonuses combined.
LSC Communications: Laid off 800 people, is $972M in debt, and total exec bonuses? $14M.
McDermott International, Ltd: Stock is at 14 cents, $9.9B in debt, and David Dickson just got $12.6M.
The numbers above were largely accurate as of July 11, 2020 … but if you are seeing this at a later date, some of them may not be.
