4 ms·

The idea that shareholders own the company and are therefore good, objective arbiters of CEO pay sounds good on paper but even the simplest of examinations of h

by ebbv 9y ago

The idea that shareholders own the company and are therefore good, objective arbiters of CEO pay sounds good on paper but even the simplest of examinations of how this functions in reality should tell you what the problems are. First, the board who decides the CEO pay are not objective. They are friends with the CEO. They are not objective. The social circles of boards of large companies and the CEOs they hire is not that big, and they do not think objectively about each other. Second, there's no real motive for them to be strict with the CEO; there's every motive to be overly generous. If they give the CEO ultra generous pay and bonuses, they then expect (and receive) to be treated in the same way when the shoe is on the other foot. When the CEO is on a board for a company they are an executive at. Executve pay has been on an insane runaway explosion for years. You can say "That's because the companies are so successful!" But Yahoo is evidence success has nothing to do with it. And I would argue even if it were due to success; the workers should be benefit at least as much as executives, and they don't.

edanm 9y ago
"First, the board who decides the CEO pay are not objective. They are friends with the CEO. They are not objective." Well you might be right, but aren't hostile takeovers, activist shareholders, etc. disproof of that? In fact, the article mentions that it was activist investors who had Marissa Mayer instated, though I don't really know the history of Yahoo that well. "Executve pay has been on an insane runaway explosion for years. You can say "That's because the companies are so successful!" But Yahoo is evidence success has nothing to do with it." It's pretty weak evidence, considering that Yahoo was very succesful for its shareholders. I mean it's one thing to make the argument when the company fails, which I still don't buy. But to make the argument when a company succeeds, by claiming it didn't succeed enough, or that the CEO wasn't enough responsible for the success?! (Defining success as what shareholders care about in this case, which is making money). We can see examples of CEOs who do much worse and destroy lots of value. And I'm not even talking about the fact that they had to pay Marissa Mayer enough to take the risk, or that you can't judge investments solely on whether they succeed or not, since all investments are risks. But I'm still left with one thing I simply don't understand here - who are you trying to protect that is getting hurt? The shareholders? How are you protecting them by limiting the ways in which they can use their money? If you really think that shareholders aren't well represented and therefore make bad decisions, then maybe you're right, but wouldn't the solution be to fix that problem, instead of attacking a symptom? "And I would argue even if it were due to success; the workers should be benefit at least as much as executives, and they don't." Not sure what you mean by "at least as much", but workers do benefit. They tend to hold shares of the company, which have increased in value just as much as the CEO's shares. Salaries in e.g. tech companies are much higher, which is another way in which workers benefit.
- ebbv 9y ago
  Workers in general do not hold shares of companies. It is a small minority of workers in the US who have shares of their company. The workers are who I'm concerned about, not the board members. The workers suffer from the current trend of executives and boards looking out only for themselves and their fellow large shareholders. Even when workers do have some shares of their company; I'm sure most Yahoo employees who were laid off would rather still have their jobs than get a final small dividend when Yahoo was sold off.
  - edanm 9y ago
    "Workers in general do not hold shares of companies. It is a small minority of workers in the US who have shares of their company." Fair enough, I was talking more about tech than about other industries, with which I'm less familiar. Still, a companies success, as you allude to later, is important for employees to keep their jobs. "The workers suffer from the current trend of executives and boards looking out only for themselves and their fellow large shareholders." In what way? And why do you specify "large" shareholders? "I'm sure most Yahoo employees who were laid off would rather still have their jobs than get a final small dividend when Yahoo was sold off." But you're changing the point of the debate! This option wasn't on the table. Yahoo was failing one way or another. The whole articles' point was that Marissa Mayer tried what she could to turn Yahoo around, but ended up not entirely succeeding on that front. That said, Yahoo overall was a good stock to buy because of other investments. As other people in the article and in the thread tend to agree with, it's not clear if someone else could've done better. The big question that people have talked about in this thread is whether Marissa Mayer should've received so much money for a growth in Yahoo that purportedly happened without her having anything to do with it. Btw, I'm just as sure that the shareholders of Yahoo would've been as happy as the employees for Marissa Mayer to have succeeded and breathed new life into Yahoo. Why wouldn't they? Trying to cast this as shareholders vs. employees strikes me as completely wrong.
    - pooper 9y ago
      Sorry, I should have been clearer. I don't want to make this about about MM v Yahoo!. MM is at worst a symptom. My argument is that the disease is systemic. > In what way? And why do you specify "large" shareholders? I don't want to go too far into conspiracy theories but I think it is logical that under certain circumstances, a "large" individual shareholder may not have the best interest of ALL the shareholders in mind. Of course, I don't think what I propose will ever exactly happen. This is merely a thought experiment to guide us. A guiding principle I remember learning in elementary school was that our rights are not absolute. Our right to freedom of speech is not absolute and neither is the right to bear arms. These rights, even though enshrined in our constitution, are arbitrary lines drawn in sand. I think the right of a corporation to pay and the right of an individual to make a living are also such rights. Now, I don't expect anyone to pick this idea up. It is too toxic. The idea that we should put caps on how much an individual is allowed to earn is unthinkable for most people. People are talking about repealing the estate tax permanently which is a huge blow to my idea. I hope some day we can push for an aggressive progressive income tax and estate tax. There are a lot of things that need to fall in place for it to happen though. For instance, it should become impossible to transfer large sums of wealth without it showing up on a public ledger of some sort. If someone has not earned $3M+ sum total (including inheritance) over their life and they buy something that costs $3M, that should automatically trip some alarm about back taxes. The more I think about it the more absurd it begins to sound though. Maybe I was wrong to suggest progressive taxes as a way to enforce caps. If not taxes, what are some ways we can try to rein (is this the proper spelling?) in executive pay?

by ebbv 9y ago

edanm 9y ago

"First, the board who decides the CEO pay are not objective. They are friends with the CEO. They are not objective." Well you might be right, but aren't hostile takeovers, activist shareholders, etc. disproof of that? In fact, the article mentions that it was activist investors who had Marissa Mayer instated, though I don't really know the history of Yahoo that well. "Executve pay has been on an insane runaway explosion for years. You can say "That's because the companies are so successful!" But Yahoo is evidence success has nothing to do with it." It's pretty weak evidence, considering that Yahoo was very succesful for its shareholders. I mean it's one thing to make the argument when the company fails, which I still don't buy. But to make the argument when a company succeeds, by claiming it didn't succeed enough, or that the CEO wasn't enough responsible for the success?! (Defining success as what shareholders care about in this case, which is making money). We can see examples of CEOs who do much worse and destroy lots of value. And I'm not even talking about the fact that they had to pay Marissa Mayer enough to take the risk, or that you can't judge investments solely on whether they succeed or not, since all investments are risks. But I'm still left with one thing I simply don't understand here - who are you trying to protect that is getting hurt? The shareholders? How are you protecting them by limiting the ways in which they can use their money? If you really think that shareholders aren't well represented and therefore make bad decisions, then maybe you're right, but wouldn't the solution be to fix that problem, instead of attacking a symptom? "And I would argue even if it were due to success; the workers should be benefit at least as much as executives, and they don't." Not sure what you mean by "at least as much", but workers do benefit. They tend to hold shares of the company, which have increased in value just as much as the CEO's shares. Salaries in e.g. tech companies are much higher, which is another way in which workers benefit.

ebbv 9y ago
Workers in general do not hold shares of companies. It is a small minority of workers in the US who have shares of their company. The workers are who I'm concerned about, not the board members. The workers suffer from the current trend of executives and boards looking out only for themselves and their fellow large shareholders. Even when workers do have some shares of their company; I'm sure most Yahoo employees who were laid off would rather still have their jobs than get a final small dividend when Yahoo was sold off.
- edanm 9y ago
  "Workers in general do not hold shares of companies. It is a small minority of workers in the US who have shares of their company." Fair enough, I was talking more about tech than about other industries, with which I'm less familiar. Still, a companies success, as you allude to later, is important for employees to keep their jobs. "The workers suffer from the current trend of executives and boards looking out only for themselves and their fellow large shareholders." In what way? And why do you specify "large" shareholders? "I'm sure most Yahoo employees who were laid off would rather still have their jobs than get a final small dividend when Yahoo was sold off." But you're changing the point of the debate! This option wasn't on the table. Yahoo was failing one way or another. The whole articles' point was that Marissa Mayer tried what she could to turn Yahoo around, but ended up not entirely succeeding on that front. That said, Yahoo overall was a good stock to buy because of other investments. As other people in the article and in the thread tend to agree with, it's not clear if someone else could've done better. The big question that people have talked about in this thread is whether Marissa Mayer should've received so much money for a growth in Yahoo that purportedly happened without her having anything to do with it. Btw, I'm just as sure that the shareholders of Yahoo would've been as happy as the employees for Marissa Mayer to have succeeded and breathed new life into Yahoo. Why wouldn't they? Trying to cast this as shareholders vs. employees strikes me as completely wrong.
  - pooper 9y ago
    Sorry, I should have been clearer. I don't want to make this about about MM v Yahoo!. MM is at worst a symptom. My argument is that the disease is systemic. > In what way? And why do you specify "large" shareholders? I don't want to go too far into conspiracy theories but I think it is logical that under certain circumstances, a "large" individual shareholder may not have the best interest of ALL the shareholders in mind. Of course, I don't think what I propose will ever exactly happen. This is merely a thought experiment to guide us. A guiding principle I remember learning in elementary school was that our rights are not absolute. Our right to freedom of speech is not absolute and neither is the right to bear arms. These rights, even though enshrined in our constitution, are arbitrary lines drawn in sand. I think the right of a corporation to pay and the right of an individual to make a living are also such rights. Now, I don't expect anyone to pick this idea up. It is too toxic. The idea that we should put caps on how much an individual is allowed to earn is unthinkable for most people. People are talking about repealing the estate tax permanently which is a huge blow to my idea. I hope some day we can push for an aggressive progressive income tax and estate tax. There are a lot of things that need to fall in place for it to happen though. For instance, it should become impossible to transfer large sums of wealth without it showing up on a public ledger of some sort. If someone has not earned $3M+ sum total (including inheritance) over their life and they buy something that costs $3M, that should automatically trip some alarm about back taxes. The more I think about it the more absurd it begins to sound though. Maybe I was wrong to suggest progressive taxes as a way to enforce caps. If not taxes, what are some ways we can try to rein (is this the proper spelling?) in executive pay?