I believe the reasoning is that it is negative if it hurts the company's bottom line. It's hard, if not impossible, to causally correlate CEO compensation with

I believe the reasoning is that it is negative if it hurts the company's bottom line. It's hard, if not impossible, to causally correlate CEO compensation with company profits so there is no reason to assume for example that "golden parachutes" pay for themselves. They don't. If company profits scaled with C-level compension, why not double their bonuses already? That's silly. And what would compensation per employee be indicative of? Nobody is criticizing that. There can be tension in public companies between the board's interests and the shareholders'. Questions of compensation is a common source.