After a night spent signing mounds of paperwork authorizing the transfer of cash, real estate, technology and other property, GM attorneys are expected to officially usher the new General Motors out of bankruptcy protection on Friday and onto a path toward a hopefully profitable future.
Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, the troubled company is expected to emerge cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans. Spurred on by the Obama administration's support, the process took just 40 days, even slightly quicker than crosstown rival Chrysler Group LLC's 42-day timeframe.
On Thursday, a bankruptcy court order allowing GM to sell most of its assets to a new company went into effect. The new GM, 61% owned by the US government, will face a brutally competitive global automotive market in the middle of the worst sales slump in a quarter-century.
At a press conference on Friday, CEO Fritz Henderson will announce that GM will cut another 4,000 white-collar jobs, including 450 top executives. The company still employs 88,000 people in the US and 235,000 worldwide.
Agencies
Showing posts with label top executives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label top executives. Show all posts
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Amid turmoil Google's top execs keep $1 salaries!
Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin maintained their traditional salaries of $1 last year even as the value of their combined stakes in the Internet search leader plunged by nearly $26 billion.
The paltry paychecks, disclosed Tuesday in a regulatory filing, come as no surprise because Schmidt, Page and Brin have insisted on their annual salaries remaining at $1 since Google went public in 2004.
The trio also don't get any bonuses or the stock awards that most of Google's other 20,000 employees receive.
That's because Page and Brin, who founded the company in 1998, already are Google's largest stockholders with about 29 million shares apiece.
Page, 36, and Brin, 35, made Schmidt, 53, a major shareholder when they hired him as CEO in 2001.
Schmidt received perquisites valued at $508,763 last year, mostly to cover personal security bills totaling $402,562. Google also paid a total of $106,201 to fly his family and friends on airplanes chartered by the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.
Including his perks, Schmidt's 2008 compensation package edged up 6 percent from 2007 when his package totaled $478,662.
The Associated Press formula is designed to isolate the value the company's board placed on the executive's total compensation package during the last fiscal year. It includes salary, bonus, performance-related bonuses, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which reflect the size of the accounting charge taken for the executive's compensation in the previous fiscal year.
Limiting their salaries to $1 didn't seem like a big sacrifice for Schmidt, Brin and Page until 2008. That's because they became multibillionaires as their holdings in Google soared eight-fold between the time of the company's initial public offering in August 2004 and the end of 2007.
Although all three men remain among the world's wealthiest people, they suffered a major setback last year. Combined, their fortunes plunged by a combined $25.8 billion, or nearly 56 percent, in 2008, as investors began to fret that Google would be hurt by the faltering economy.
Google held up better than many people feared as its revenue rose 38 percent to $21.8 billion, but the company's stock price still plummeted from $691.48 at the close of 2007 to $307.65 at the end of last year.
Google shares have rallied along with the overall market recently, closing Thursday at $347.17.
The steep decline in Google's market value prompted the company to recently decrease its employees' cost to exercise a total of 7.64 million stock options. The re-pricing gives the 15,642 who participated in the program a better chance to strike it rich in future years.
Signaling its intent to hand out even more stock options as it expands, Google wants to add another 8.5 million shares to the pool of available awards. The request will be voted on at the company's annual meeting May 7.
Other Silicon Valley billionaires, such as Yahoo Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, also have limited their salaries to $1 while serving as CEO.
But mogul CEOs haven't been as egalitarian. For instance, Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison pocketed a $1 million salary in the company's last fiscal year and received an additional 7 million stock options valued at $71.4 million when they were granted.
Agencies
The paltry paychecks, disclosed Tuesday in a regulatory filing, come as no surprise because Schmidt, Page and Brin have insisted on their annual salaries remaining at $1 since Google went public in 2004.
The trio also don't get any bonuses or the stock awards that most of Google's other 20,000 employees receive.
That's because Page and Brin, who founded the company in 1998, already are Google's largest stockholders with about 29 million shares apiece.
Page, 36, and Brin, 35, made Schmidt, 53, a major shareholder when they hired him as CEO in 2001.
Schmidt received perquisites valued at $508,763 last year, mostly to cover personal security bills totaling $402,562. Google also paid a total of $106,201 to fly his family and friends on airplanes chartered by the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.
Including his perks, Schmidt's 2008 compensation package edged up 6 percent from 2007 when his package totaled $478,662.
The Associated Press formula is designed to isolate the value the company's board placed on the executive's total compensation package during the last fiscal year. It includes salary, bonus, performance-related bonuses, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which reflect the size of the accounting charge taken for the executive's compensation in the previous fiscal year.
Limiting their salaries to $1 didn't seem like a big sacrifice for Schmidt, Brin and Page until 2008. That's because they became multibillionaires as their holdings in Google soared eight-fold between the time of the company's initial public offering in August 2004 and the end of 2007.
Although all three men remain among the world's wealthiest people, they suffered a major setback last year. Combined, their fortunes plunged by a combined $25.8 billion, or nearly 56 percent, in 2008, as investors began to fret that Google would be hurt by the faltering economy.
Google held up better than many people feared as its revenue rose 38 percent to $21.8 billion, but the company's stock price still plummeted from $691.48 at the close of 2007 to $307.65 at the end of last year.
Google shares have rallied along with the overall market recently, closing Thursday at $347.17.
The steep decline in Google's market value prompted the company to recently decrease its employees' cost to exercise a total of 7.64 million stock options. The re-pricing gives the 15,642 who participated in the program a better chance to strike it rich in future years.
Signaling its intent to hand out even more stock options as it expands, Google wants to add another 8.5 million shares to the pool of available awards. The request will be voted on at the company's annual meeting May 7.
Other Silicon Valley billionaires, such as Yahoo Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, also have limited their salaries to $1 while serving as CEO.
But mogul CEOs haven't been as egalitarian. For instance, Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison pocketed a $1 million salary in the company's last fiscal year and received an additional 7 million stock options valued at $71.4 million when they were granted.
Agencies
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Citi's Pandit to take $1 salary, no bonus
Stung by criticism about use of billions of dollars in government aid, Citigroup's Indian American CEO, Vikram Pandit has vowed to take a token salary of $1 and no bonus until the ailing banking giant returns to profitability
'I get the new reality and I will make sure Citi gets it as well,' Pandit said Wednesday as lawmakers grilled top executives from eight of America's largest financial institutions about their apparent lack of willingness to lend despite collectively receiving $165 billion in capital.
'We will hold ourselves accountable for what we do, and that starts with me,' said Pandit, who collected a salary of $1 million last year. Citigroup has lost more than $20 billion in the last five quarters.
Appearing before the US House Financial Services Committee Pandit, 52, said taxpayers were right to expect a return for their investment, adding that the bank will pay $3.4 billion in annual dividends on the debt.
'There is a great deal of anger in the country, much of it justified, about past practices,' committee chairman Barney Frank noted in his opening remarks.
The banks have come under fire from lawmakers who criticised bonus payments and corporate expenses such as new executive jets at a time when people across the country are struggling to stay in their homes or losing their jobs. President Barack Obama last month called the bonuses 'shameful' and the 'height of irresponsibility.'
Citigroup, which has accepted $45 billion in government bailout money, last month reversed a decision to buy a $50 million corporate jet under pressure from the government. Last week the bank cancelled a convention in Atlanta for its Primerica Financial Services Inc. unit.
The CEOs were asked to disclose their salaries and bonuses for 2008 and 2009 at the hearing. The highest paid CEO for the year was Bank of America's Ken Lewis with a salary of $1.5 million, while the lowest was Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Lloyd Blankfein with a $600,000 salary. None of the executives took a bonus for 2008 or will have a salary increase in 2009.
Many of the CEOs at Wednesday's hearing defended their actions, noting that while credit standards have tightened, they were continuing to issue loans. Several of the CEOs added that without government assistance, credit would be even harder to obtain.
'We are still lending, and we are lending far more because of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Programme),' Bank of America Chairman and CEO Lewis said.
Yahoo
'I get the new reality and I will make sure Citi gets it as well,' Pandit said Wednesday as lawmakers grilled top executives from eight of America's largest financial institutions about their apparent lack of willingness to lend despite collectively receiving $165 billion in capital.
'We will hold ourselves accountable for what we do, and that starts with me,' said Pandit, who collected a salary of $1 million last year. Citigroup has lost more than $20 billion in the last five quarters.
Appearing before the US House Financial Services Committee Pandit, 52, said taxpayers were right to expect a return for their investment, adding that the bank will pay $3.4 billion in annual dividends on the debt.
'There is a great deal of anger in the country, much of it justified, about past practices,' committee chairman Barney Frank noted in his opening remarks.
The banks have come under fire from lawmakers who criticised bonus payments and corporate expenses such as new executive jets at a time when people across the country are struggling to stay in their homes or losing their jobs. President Barack Obama last month called the bonuses 'shameful' and the 'height of irresponsibility.'
Citigroup, which has accepted $45 billion in government bailout money, last month reversed a decision to buy a $50 million corporate jet under pressure from the government. Last week the bank cancelled a convention in Atlanta for its Primerica Financial Services Inc. unit.
The CEOs were asked to disclose their salaries and bonuses for 2008 and 2009 at the hearing. The highest paid CEO for the year was Bank of America's Ken Lewis with a salary of $1.5 million, while the lowest was Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Lloyd Blankfein with a $600,000 salary. None of the executives took a bonus for 2008 or will have a salary increase in 2009.
Many of the CEOs at Wednesday's hearing defended their actions, noting that while credit standards have tightened, they were continuing to issue loans. Several of the CEOs added that without government assistance, credit would be even harder to obtain.
'We are still lending, and we are lending far more because of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Programme),' Bank of America Chairman and CEO Lewis said.
Yahoo
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