What do you think of the amount of compensation in the form of salary, bonuses and stock options that are paid to top execs of multinational corporations?

Good on them.

Well, when a small group of people at the top are deciding how the company's salaries and stock options should be split across the workforce, what do you think will happen? Precisely what does happen - they give the vast majority of it all to themselves and to hell with everyone else! It would be better if they took significantly less and paid the rest of their employees a better salary. It would surely be better for the company because well compensated workers will be more motivated, and better for society as a whole as it would help reduce wealth inequality.

That's to be expected. To the workers on line, not even a raise. That's become the way things work. If you wear a suit and tie, you get a high salary, bonuses, stocks, and tax breaks. The workers struggle to make ends meet. Have you ever heard a politician stump for tax breaks for the working class? Me neither.

its capitalism.at its best.

no word more to say.

Hard to say. Whether an individual CEO is making too much or too little (or just the right amount) depends on a lot of factors.

That said, there are some general problems particularly with CEOs at large American companies, which suggest that for a lot of them their pay is not a reflection of what they are worth to the company, but rather the warped way that corporate governance systems have affected the labor market for "top" executives.

Part of the problem is that most of their pay packages consist of various forms of stock based pay (various types of options and grants). The theory behind this is that tying their pay in some way to stock price helps ensure that their personal financial interests are directly tied to those of the shareholders, thus giving them an incentive to work hard to increase shareholder value.

Its a good idea in theory and has some merit, but there are a lot of problems with it. CEOs can negotiate contractual terms that set them up for massive windfalls that are the result of their ability to use the levers at their power to temporarily manipulate stock price at a given time (when options vest) that might come at the expense of the actual well being of the company they manage. Numerous examples of this exist out there.

Stock options also have the downside of creating windfall payouts to executives for stuff that is completely unrelated to them. If you are the CEO of a company that sells a given commodity, and the market for that commodity happens to be high at the right time, pushing prices up (such as, for example, the price of oil when there is a war in the middle east or something), the share price of that company will coincidentally also go up, but this has nothing to do with anything the CEO did or didn't do. Yet they get paid for being lucky.

Further, they often demand terms in their contract that make it almost impossible to fire them, even if they suck at the job, by requiring the company to give massive payouts if they are fired. Disney's former CEO Michael Eisner was the beneficiary of one such provision - he was fired after less than a year on the job yet due to his contract received a payout of over 100 million dollars - not because he did a good job but precisely because he did the opposite.

Why do companies give these kind of contracts? Because boards of directors that are supposed to negotiate them on behalf of the company have a bunch of misaligned incentives that encourage them to give overly generous contracts, and they are supported by a cottage industry of executive compensation advisors who generally make recommendations that also encourage ever-higher contract amounts despite there being very little evidence to support them from the perspective of what is actually good for the companies they manage.

Its a broken system.

It's a great system, for this who work hard, are diligent and don't expect hand outs or some Universal Credit nonsense.

If you ask people in the industry, they'll say that you have to stay competitive in order to get the "top talent". You basically have this pool of CEOs or former CEOs floating around, building their resume's, giving speeches, not really doing much, but talking big. Once hired, they fly around the world on private jets, rubbing elbows with world leaders and celebs, building connections and relationships. They'll often serve on boards with other top brass, basically sitting around, attending meetings. in most cases, these people are hired because of their image. They look good on camera or talking to the press. I've found its very similar to school principals in the Japanese public school system, or school heads in International schools. They float around. Rarely make a long term commitment to any school.

Tax them into poverty.

@Redemption: Why?

I have the same low opinion for them as I have for the overpaid overbonused do-less politicians and government officials.

Disdain.

Because they tax the working class into poverty and take every step to avoid paying a fair share of taxes.

CEOs convince the peasants that their labor is not what makes the company lots of money for the people who own the company. Not an easy skill I'd say. The more you can convince the peasants how replaceable they are, the more money for the shareholders. What shareholders wouldn't pay CEOs the money they "deserve" ?

Solution ? If peasants can make lots of money for the shareholders without the overtly-glorified-middle-manager known as CEOs, the shareholders would be super happy to get rid of them! (There are very successful worker coop companies in the world, fyi).

Too bad though, most peasants are sheep, can't accomplish anything without their lords' directions.

All too often they are rewarded for failure.

Every year of my life has certainly not been a success, but I've still been paid, often less if so, and that's to be expected. If you can lock yourself into something like these CEO's do, please don't tell me you wouldn't do the same. I very much doubt it.

and @kibousha: Lets name some of these 'very successful' co-ops shall we? Household names would be a good start.

1 hand, they deserve higher pay being the head of a major multinational corporation. Usually. I have no qualms with that as a concept. Even in countries that are outlyiers on the surface, but having these CEO etc make weirdly low amounts of money yearly, but are especially compensated with gifts and discounts from partners to get around claims of making too much money.

That said in almost all instances these peoples compensation is vastly beyond their workforce which is a massive issue. “We can’t give wage increases, but also our CEO is making 150 million dollars a year, stock options, gifts and discounts, and a bonus of 125 million… but no we can’t manage to find the budget for wage increases “

it’s pretty wild out there

One word - hideous.

A few words!

I love capitalism and did well with it.

It is written into their his or her contracts, And like they are going to say, I really didn't preform to the shareholder's expectation how about we renegotiate my payout so to reflects my true input. Yeah Na thanks and bye.