Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Executive compensation in the United States" in English language version.
The number of companies making upfront payments surged to more than 70 this year from 41 in all of 2012, according to governance-advisory firm GMI Ratings Inc.
J.C. Penney fired Johnson in April, 17 months after giving him a signing bonus of $52.7 million in shares to recruit him from Apple Inc. ... J.C. Penney shares slumped 50 per cent during Johnson's tenure, while Hewlett-Packard Co. dropped 46 per cent under Leo Apotheker, ousted in 2011 just 10 months after getting $8.6 million in signing bonus and relocation benefit. In total, Apotheker was entitled to about $34.7 million in cash and stock for less than one year's work.
[...] many theories are examined — institutionalism, sociological trends in bourgeois political economy, various theories regarding the transformation of capitalism and the concepts of managerism, "human capital" and the "democratization of capital.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)The main factor, he insists, is that major companies are giving their top executives outlandish pay packages. His research shows that "supermanagers", rather than "superstars", account for up to seventy per cent of the top 0.1 per cent of the income distribution. (In 2010, you needed to earn at least $1.5 million to qualify for this élite group.) Rising income inequality is largely a corporate phenomenon.
After big corporations threatened to quit the country, voters in Switzerland last year rejected a referendum that would have restricted the pay gap to a ratio of 12 to 1. But the proposition still garnered 35 per cent support amid a heated campaign. The idea of a global talent pool for chief executives is, however, largely a myth. Not one of the chief executives heading up the 142 American companies in the Fortune Global 500 at the end of 2012, for example, was an external hire from overseas. There was a little movement within Europe, but over all, poaching of chief executives from abroad accounted for only 0.8 per cent of C.E.O. appointments in the Fortune Global 500.)
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help){{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)In what is described as "competitive benchmarking", compensation levels are generally targeted to either the 50th, 75th, or 90th percentile. This process is alleged to provide an effective gauge of "market wages" which are necessary for executive retention. As we will describe, this conception of such a market was created purely by happenstance and based upon flawed assumptions, particularly the easy transferability of executive talent. Because of its uniform application across companies, the effects of structural flaws in its design significantly affect the level of executive compensation