Quotes & Sayings About Executive Compensation

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay. — Warren Buffett

Executive compensation dipped during the financial crisis, but it has risen briskly since, and is now higher than it's ever been. — Anonymous

For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated. — Warren Buffett

The great irony of executive compensation is, if you pay your employees more, you're gonna create more demand for your goods and services! Which is gonna lead to more executive compensation than if you pay your employees less and try to take all the cream off of the top. — Anthony Scaramucci

When you give chief executives too much compensation in stock options, they concentrate too much on the stock price, and there is a perverse incentive to raise the stock price, particularly when the chief executive wants to exercise his own options. — George Akerlof

For most of the twentieth century, directors were paid largely in cash. Now, so that their interests will be aligned with those of shareholders, much of their pay is in stock. Boards of directors were once populated by corporate insiders, family members, and cronies of the C.E.O. Today, boards have many more independent directors, and C.E.O.s typically have less influence over how boards run. And S.E.C. reforms since the early nineteen-nineties have forced companies to be transparent about executive compensation. — Anonymous

We have new rules that give shareholders the ability to vote on executive compensation. We have new rules for asset-backed securities. We have new rules around credit rating agencies. — Mary Schapiro

The key reason executives are paid so much now is that they appoint the members of the corporate board that determines their compensation and control many of the perks that board members count on. So it's not the invisible hand of the market that leads to those monumental executive incomes; it's the invisible handshake in the boardroom. — Paul Krugman

TARP is funded by taxpayers, so there are many rules about how that money can and can't be used. The result: GM spends an awful lot of time checking in with the people who administer TARP over everything from hiring to executive compensation and management. For a global company, that adds up to a lot of distraction. — Edward Whitacre Jr.