SiliconBeat

I had to rub my eyes when someone passed along a link to this story on Tuesday:

Has the world gone made? Was this a hoax?

Just listen to this madness from the Post story:

“A coalition of blue-chip companies on Monday endorsed the idea of voluntarily overhauling executive compensation practices in an effort to restore public confidence in corporate America and to get out ahead of potentially more burdensome rules that could emerge from Washington.

Pay practices such as huge severance payments, personal use of corporate jets and incentives not tied to long-term performance should vanish unless a specific justification exists, according to a task force convened by the business organization the Conference Board.”

Now this is either a radical change of heart, or a phony attempt to head off attempts by the federal government to impose more harsh guidelines. Let’s take a closer look: Read the rest of this entry »

Salaries of the executive officers at Atheros Communications, which were reduced Feb. 1 in a cost saving measure, were restored Monday by the board’s compensation committee. Chief Executive Craig Barratt, who had his annual salary cut 40 percent to $204,000, will now be paid at an annual rate of $340,000. Other executives, who had their salaries cut 20 percent, also had their pay raised back to 2008 levels.

The committee re-evaluated the salary reductions light of better-than-expected results Atheros announced yesterday for its 2009 second quarter, and for its third quarter forecast earnings of from 29 to 31 cents a share, significantly higher than the 17 cents average analyst estimate in a Thomson Reuters survey were expecting. Shares of Atheros popped today, rising $1.83, or 8.1 percent, to close at $24.35.

It is certainly a welcome relief for the company, whose CEO warned in December that the “economic environment deteriorated significantly throughout the (2008) fourth quarter and consumer demand across multiple geographies weakened.”

Hansen Medical extended for a second month the guaranteed monthly bonus of $16,667 it pays to its senior vice president of commercial operations, Christopher Sells, in addition to his $275,000 annual salary.

When Sells was first hired in June 2008, the company offered Read the rest of this entry »

Raise your hand if you recently quit your job and in the process got a severance package that was bigger than what you’d have gotten if you were let go by your employer?

Avistar Communications, the San Mateo company that was delisted from the Nasdaq stock market last month, reported today that Read the rest of this entry »

IXYS,  the Milpitas maker of power-control semiconductors that said in May it wouldn’t provide guidance on future revenue because of “changing economic conditions”, nevertheless included revenues among five performance objectives it approved relating to the 2010 cash bonus for Chief Executive Nathan Zommer, whose target bonus was set at $300,000 and could be as much as Read the rest of this entry »

Volterra Semiconductor raised the pay of two of its top executives starting today, according to an SEC filing. The salary increases, which were recommended in January by the board of directors’ compensation consultant after examining comparable pay at the company’s peer group of 20 other chip makers mostly based in Silicon Valley did not take effect earlier due to Read the rest of this entry »

Spansion, the bankrupt Sunnyvale flash memory maker that gave its executives a retention-based pay raise in February the same day it fired 3,000 workers, named its fourth chief financial officer in less than five months.

Randy Furr was named to replace Nathan Sarkisian, who served as interim CFO since May 20 when he replaced the previous Read the rest of this entry »

The board of directors at Electronics for Imaging apparently batted 1.000 at the company’s annual meeting Friday when all the directors were reelected and all the proposals the board submitted to its shareholders for a vote passed.

But the perfect record obscured the fact that Read the rest of this entry »

Aruba Networks, which last November layed off 46 employees to reduce costs and “streamline operations”, last week granted its chief executive, Dominic Orr, a 33 percent raise in salary from $300,000 to $400,000, according to a filing it made with the SEC today.

Chief Financial Officer Steffan Tomlinson Read the rest of this entry »

Kana Software, the Menlo Park supplier of customer-service software whose auditor has raised substantial doubt about (its) ability to continue as a going concern, says it decided not to give its chief executive, Michael Fields, a raise over the last two years.  Instead it starting paying his rent, according to the company proxy file today.

Fields, who became chief executive in 2005, was paid Read the rest of this entry »