Unfortunately, in our country, Canada, the major landline companies are
also the major cellphone companies. We haven't been able to break free
of their shackles, yet. These companies have migrated from one type of
monopoly to another type of monopoly. How much fun for them!?
Yousuf Khan
New York Times (-abbreviated, fl)
March 20, 2014, 12:37 pm
$80 Million for 6 Weeks for Cable Chief
By DAVID GELLES
Rob Marcus took over as chief executive of Time Warner Cable in
January.Larry Busacca/Getty Images for WICT Rob Marcus took over as
chief executive of Time Warner Cable in January.
Less than two months later, he agreed to sell the company to its
largest rival, Comcast, for $45 billion.
For that work, he will receive nearly $80 million if the deal closes,
a severance payment that amounts to more than $1 million a day for the
six weeks he ran the company before agreeing to sell.
“It’s not unprecedented, but it is rare and troubling,†said Robert
Jackson Jr., an associate professor at Columbia Law School.
The extraordinarily large exit package is just one more example of
corporate America rewarding executives with outsize sums for sometimes
minimal amounts of work, and it comes despite the growing debate over
income inequality in America.
So-called golden parachutes are common features in the employment
contracts for public company executives, and they often reach
stratospheric heights.
Compensation experts contend that golden parachutes can be in the best
interests of shareholders. Without one, a chief executive might not
want to sell the company and lose his salary.
What is more, many golden parachutes are structured to reflect the
total value of salary, bonuses and stock options that executives would
receive over the duration of their employment.
But critics see the packages as distorting influences that create
incentives for chief executives to sell their companies.
Golden parachutes first appeared in the 1970s and proliferated in the
1980s. And while recent regulation has given shareholders a voice
through say-on-pay votes, it has not damped executives’ enthusiasm for
big paydays.
Time Warner Cable and Comcast both declined to comment on the matter.
Mr. Marcus will not be the only Time Warner Cable executive in line
for a big payday. Arthur T. Minson Jr., the chief financial officer,
will receive severance pay of $27 million. Michael L. LaJoie, the
chief technology officer, will receive $16.3 million. And Philip G.
Meeks, the chief operating officer, will take home $11.7 million.
Left off the list of golden parachute recipients is Glenn Britt, who
ran Time Warner Cable after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009. Mr.
Britt stepped down at the end of 2013, partly because of health
issues, but not before he told Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive
of Comcast, that combining their companies one day would be a “dream
deal.â€
Executive compensation experts said that there were few ways to curb
the practice of awarding golden parachutes
...(fl)..
but that shareholders should voice their opinions nonetheless.
“If Time Warner Cable shareholders are sufficiently outraged, they can
vote against it, and if executives are sufficiently embarrassed, it
might discourage other C.E.O.s from doing the same thing,†said Mr.
Jackson. “But I’m not optimistic.â€