How’s your paycheck? Does size matter?
Compare it to Apple’s Tim Cook at $348 million or WWP’s Martin Sorrell who didn’t get his $10.5 million or a lot of rich CEOs in between
How much is $348 million? (graphic: NYT)
Wow! And we thought times were tough.
Somewhere between the 99% and the 1% there was supposed to be a tempering of the ghastly amounts of money CEOs stuff in their pockets. But something funny happened on the way to reforms. Yes, some shareholders have gotten tougher on compensation packages, and some of these figures include “one-time payments” but most have absolutely no correlation to performance. It appears that CEO compensation still has no relevance to reality.
Last week there were a couple of articles in the New York Times worth a read: 1) C.E.O. Pay Is Rising Despite the Din by Nathaniel Popper; and 2) WPP Chief’s Pay Package Is Rejected by Shareholders by Julia Werdigier. And there is a list of the top 200 CEO compensation packages in public companies.
Near the bottom of the barrel is poor old Sir Martin Sorrell. He didn’t make the list because he had his $10.5 million proposed package rejected. At least he gets to keep his knighthood. Never could figure out how an ad guy could get knighted. Of course, if Conrad Black, a criminal, can keep his Lordship, I guess anything goes … if only in Britain. And get this. Sir Martin was pissed off despite the fact that he wanted a 60% increase while the company’s shares dropped 15%. I guess the higher up you go the greater the audacity for arrogance. Maybe Martin was looking up the food chain and saw far in the distant stratosphere Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook. He received … $348 million. That’s not a typo.
Here’s a smattering from the list to whet your appetite. Or make you want to throw up.
- Tim Cook, Apple: $348 million
- David E. Simon, Simon Property Group:$137 million
- Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle: $77.6 million)
- Leslie Moonves, CBS: $68.4 million
- Ron Johnson, J.C. Penny (ex-Apple): $53 million
- David M. Zaslav, Discovery Communications: $52.4 million
- Rupert Murdoch, Fox: $29 million (despite the damage he’s done to devalue the corporation)
- Rex Tillerson, Exxon, $25.2 million
- Jamie Dimon, J.P. Morgan: $23 million (despite losing $4 billion +)
- Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard: $16 million (while cutting 27,000 jobs)
- Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft Foods: $15.7
- Ted Solso, Cummins: $14.8
- Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo, $14.1
- Michael Roth, Interpublic: $13.0 (top public agency)
- David King, Laboratory of America: $10.9 (this is the bottom of the list – believe it)
For the rest of the list – click. Read, weep and then put in for a raise.
“People are the worst”
Coming 2026
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.
My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.
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