Cost of new CEO at eBay: $25 million (plus stuff for Meg)
It’s not cheap to change your chief executive, especially when the old one sticks around as a special advisor. Just ask eBay.
The company filed details of compensation being offered to its new CEO, John Donahoe:
- Salary: $900,000. (OK, that’s a slight savings, as Meg Whitman got $995,016 last year. But she’s sticking around as a “special advisor” making $600,000 a year.)
- Bonus target: $1,125,000. (Once again, a slight savings from the $1,132,692 Whitman got in 2006, the most recent figures available. Note: stock price fell 30 percent that year. And as special advisor she’s got a target bonus worth $600,000. In addition, she remains eligible to get extra money she would have received with respect to the 2008 annual component of the “eBay Incentive Plan” had she remained eligible to receive payment through the first quarter of 2009.)
- Long-term equity award: $8 million worth of stock options and restricted stock units. (Whitman, who will get no new equity awards, will get continued vesting of performance-based restricted stock units she would have been granted had she remained eligible to receive them through the first quarter of 2009.)
- Promotion award: $15 million worth of stock options and restricted stock units.
Whitman , who will remain on eBay’s board, will also get free office space and “secretarial services” for three years. Memoir, anyone? (Whitman is reportedly toying with the idea of a run for governor of California.) If nothing else, her arrangements allow her to bide her time in case some of her 2.8 million underwater options rise up into the money.
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I am so tired of hearing how much these CEO’s and other Executives are being paid, while the rank-and-file employees go broke. Any company will continue to run, build products, provides services, or whatever it does, regardless of how much or how little the Executive staff is paid. And lately, I don’t see that the Executive staff’s of any of the large companies are really making a positive difference in the operation of their respective companies.