Latest news with #Equilar
Los Angeles Times
23-06-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Hollywood is in bad shape. You wouldn't know it from CEO pay
Warner Bros. Discovery is in poor shape — so much so that Chief Executive David Zaslav has decided to unwind the 2022 merger he orchestrated by splitting the company in two. But Zaslav himself is doing just fine, to the chagrin of shareholders. In a rare searing rebuke, investors recently cast a symbolic vote disapproving of Zaslav's 2024 compensation package, which rose 4% to $51.9 million compared with the year before. The package, approved by the company's board of directors, ensured that Zaslav remained one of the nation's highest-paid corporate leaders. Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services, known as ISS, described the company's executive compensation packages as 'an unmitigated pay-for-performance misalignment.' The situation renewed scrutiny of the compensation levels for leaders of the top entertainment companies, which remain high compared with peers in other industries. Although 2024 was a bad year for Hollywood, it was a very good year for some of the industry's top executives, according to a survey of data by Equilar, which studies executive pay, for The Times. The median compensation for those executives for 2024 was $33.9 million, up 7% from 2023, Equilar said. That's about double the median compensation of CEOs at S&P 500 companies, which was $17.1 million last year. The compensation data include stock options, base salaries, bonuses and other perks for CEOs from Netflix, Fox Corp., Roku, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., AMC Networks, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery and the Walt Disney Co. Paramount was excluded from the median data because of a change from one CEO to three in April 2024. 'The compensation packages remain somewhat out of whack based on the good old days where the margins were substantially higher,' said Evan Shapiro, a former NBCUniversal executive who now runs his own company. 'The Hollywood era got used to very specific — some would argue irrational — pay packages and never readjusted itself when the business went haywire.' Pay packages increased for Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, reflecting the streaming giant's strong performance. The value of Sarandos' pay package went up 24% to $61.9 million, while Peters' went up 50% to $60.3 million. Other executives whose compensation increased included Bob Bakish, who was ousted as CEO of Paramount in April 2024. He had a package worth $86.96 million in 2024 (which included his roughly $69 million severance), up 178% from $31.3 million a year earlier. Disney chief Bob Iger, who spent 2024 mounting a turnaround for the Burbank-based company, earned $41.1 million, up 30% from the previous year. During the year, Disney had renewed strength at the box office and achieved streaming profitability after years of losses. Fox Corp.'s CEO Lachlan Murdoch's total pay rose 9% to $23.8 million, while Roku CEO Anthony Wood got a bump of 37% to $27.7 million. Others got a pay cut. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts' 2024 compensation declined 5% to $33.9 million, primarily due to a lower cash bonus. AMC Networks CEO Kristin Dolan had a 40% drop to $8.7 million last year related to a $6.8-million equity award she received in 2023 tied to her promotion to CEO. Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer earned $18.2 million in the company's fiscal 2024 year, down 15% compared with $21.5 million from fiscal 2023. For 2024, the highest-paid chief executives among publicly traded media and entertainment companies compiled by Equilar for The Times were Bakish, Zaslav, Sarandos, Peters and Iger. Most of the companies declined to comment or referred The Times to proxy statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Fox Corp. did not return a request for comment. The increase in pay reflects a broader trend at publicly traded companies. Compensation is increasing as companies try to align pay with performance by handing out large stock awards, said Amit Batish, senior director of content for Equilar. Certain awards such as stock options typically benefit executives only if the stock goes up. Some executives are also adding security perks after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year, he said. Several Hollywood executives had pay packages last year that were worth substantially more than the median, Equilar said. With so much change and disruption happening in the entertainment business and plenty of competition for skilled leadership, companies believe they need to pay up to hold on to executive talent. 'Especially in the entertainment industry that's constantly evolving, with streaming services taking over, there's constant fluctuations in the market, so companies are looking to find ways to keep their executives on board and motivated,' Batish said. Sky-high executive compensation has resurfaced debate about a subject that has been simmering since even before the 2023 strikes led by writers and actors — the widening pay gap between executives and workers. Many entertainment workers have left Southern California due to the lack of work, as more productions are moving out of the area due to increased costs. Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal and Paramount have continued to lay off employees. Some entertainment workers struggling to find jobs have adopted the saying 'Persist to '26,' replacing last year's 'Survive 'til '25.' 'Any survey of executive pay, generally there's a disconnect between what people see in their own checking accounts and when they see what executives, particularly for top Fortune 500 companies, earned,' said David Smith, a professor of economics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. 'There's often discontent with the chasm between the rank and file and CEOs.' Zaslav became a symbol of that ire in 2021 when his compensation package was valued at $246.6 million, which included stock options tied to the merger. The value of his 2024 compensation was much lower at $51.9 million, but still higher than other executives such as Disney's Iger. Following the nonbinding shareholder 'say on pay' vote, Warner Bros. Discovery pledged to address shareholder concerns. Those changes are expected to lower Zaslav's future payouts. Similarly, Disney and Netflix in recent years have been hit with negative shareholder votes on the pay, leading to adjustments. Zaslav's target annual cash bonus opportunity will shrink from $22 million to $6 million after splitting Warner Bros. Discovery in two, separating studios and streaming services from linear cable networks, the company said. Zaslav's base salary would remain $3 million. 'We structured the new compensation packages to address shareholders' feedback by fostering pay-for-performance alignment,' Warner Bros. Discovery board chair Samuel A. Di Piazza Jr. said in a statement. While Warner Bros. Discovery worked on retiring $4.4 billion in debt through cost-cutting and launched its streaming service Max (which is being rebranded back to HBO Max) in 70 markets last year, the company also had some fumbles, including losing the NBA on its TV networks. 'It appears the board may have been out-negotiated,' said Lloyd Greif, chief executive of Los Angeles investment bank Greif & Co. 'They created incentives that did not directly translate into a higher stock price, or higher revenue and EBITDA growth' — referring to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. 'So,' he added, 'you have to look at the results and say, the board blew the call.' The company's compensation committee said it took into account Zaslav's performance across different goals including revenue, cash flow, enhancing the motion picture slate, cost controls, launching Max globally and securing talent. Warner Bros. Discovery's revenue in 2024 fell 5% to $39.3 billion, compared with 2023. Adjusted earnings excluding certain items fell 11% during that same time period. The stock price declined about 7% in 2024. 'It just sends a very bad message to your teams,' said Paul Verna, vice president of content at research firm Emarketer, adding that leaders should inspire their teams amid challenges facing the industry. 'It's very hard to do that when you're firing thousands of people but not really absorbing any pain yourself in your own compensation.' The committee saw the loss of the NBA U.S. TV rights as a positive, saying it resulted in a 'more efficient long-term relationship with the league,' according to the company's proxy filing. When the compensation committee evaluated those figures, it took out costs related to a joint venture called Venu Sports that was meant to launch in 2024 but was scrapped, as well as new sports rights programming and packages. That irked some groups, including ISS, though some executive compensation experts said it is not uncommon for companies to factor out some costs deemed to be out of the executive's control. The reverberations of the shareholder vote continue. It could cause the board to put pressure on the compensation committee to improve its performance or activist shareholders to target the company for a proxy contest, Lawrence Cunningham, director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, wrote in an email to The Times. 'Shareholder votes on pay, even when non-binding, send a signal that can be important,' Cunningham wrote. 'A 60% no vote is huge.'
The Age
10-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
This man made $10.5 billion last year from keeping a close eye on Americans
Karp was in second place in last year's report with nearly $US1.1 billion in gains, trailing Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, who gained $US1.4 billion. Musk's name is absent from the top-paid lists this year, but he has been fighting in the courts to retain a past, gargantuan pay package that a judge in Delaware has voided twice. The Tesla shares in that contested pay package were worth more than $US98 billion at the end of May, according to Courtney Yu, director of research at Equilar. Musk funnelled $US250 million into President Donald Trump's campaign efforts and was behind the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Facing declining sales at Tesla, he has left the White House for renewed work at his companies, which also include SpaceX, a rocket company and military contractor; X, a social media platform; and xAI, an artificial intelligence company. Classic compensation There's another important way to look at executive compensation: the estimated value of a pay package when it was originally granted. This annual snapshot must also be disclosed by corporations, thanks to government requirements that were tightened under Dodd-Frank. This more traditional approach, which the Times has covered regularly with the help of Equilar since 2012, tends to produce smaller figures for CEO compensation than the 'compensation actually paid' approach. But the numbers are still enormous, compared with the earnings of most working people. It, too, is being reevaluated by the Trump administration. The biggest payday in corporate America last year, using this traditional measure of executive compensation, went to Peter Gassner of Veeva Systems, a cloud-computing company focused on the life sciences, with a total compensation of $US172.4 million, nearly all from stock options and awards. The median employee at the company earned $US137,866. It would take a worker at Veeva Systems 1251 years to earn what Gassner did in 2024. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another. In a statement, Veeva said Gassner's compensation reflected a stock option grant that depended on the company's share performance and 'is intended as Mr. Gassner's only equity compensation through 2030.' The company said his $US475,000 salary is 'one of the lowest' for CEOs at publicly traded companies. Right behind Gassner on the top-pay list was Patrick W. Smith, aka Rick Smith, who was a founder of Axon Enterprise. It was previously called TASER International and was named for what is still Axon's best-known product: Tasers. The company says its product line also includes 'body cameras, in-car cameras, cloud-hosted digital evidence management solutions, productivity software and real-time operations capabilities.' Loading Smith's total compensation in 2024, using traditional accounting, was $US164.5 million. In a statement, the company said that number reflected 'a long-term, performance-based equity award,' which he would receive only 'over seven years, contingent on Axon meeting ambitious performance goals.' The median Axon employee was paid $US205,322 in 2024, handsome wages compared with salaries at most companies. Even so, because Smith's compensation package was so big, it would take an Axon employee 801 years to earn Smith's pay for just one year. And, using the compensation-actually-paid metric, he earned vastly more: $US385 million in 2024. Gassner at Veeva Systems raked in $US284 million using that measure. The big picture Corporate compensation filings are tedious reading, but they are a trove of information. That may be why they have never been uniformly popular in corner offices and why the Trump administration is beginning a process that could lead to the curtailment or demise of some of these disclosure requirements. In my view, that would be a shame. I would hate to lose access to any of the details being revealed by public corporations. Consider some of the highlights from this year's disclosures, compiled by Equilar. All told, for the 100 highest-paid CEOs of publicly traded companies in 2024, the median CEO compensation, much of it from stock options, was $US37 million, using the traditional accounting metric. That is a big number. Comparing it with what corporate employees make is revealing. The median worker at these companies was paid $US110,125, which is an astonishingly big pay gap. It would take the median employee — the one right in the middle of the income distribution — 357 years to earn what the median CEO earned in just one year. And using comparable, historical data that excludes the compensation at private equity firms, the pay ratio at publicly traded companies is almost 350-to-1, or, simply, 350, which is more than ever before. As I've pointed out before, pay disparities of this magnitude reflect levels of income inequality that were considered repugnant 50 years ago. The American social structure was flatter and CEO-to-worker pay ratios were lower then. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another. Through the 1970s, one study found, the pay ratio for big companies was less than 20. In the 1980s, Peter F. Drucker, the economist and Wall Street Journal columnist, said it felt 'about right' when CEOs received 10 to 12 times what workers earned. Loading Yes, it's better to be the boss. Anybody in the workforce already knows this without seeing any of these details. But the details matter. Happily, for investors and for rank-and-file workers, we now have considerable information on exactly how well CEOs are paid — and how much more money they receive than everybody else. The Securities and Exchange Commission will convene later this month for a formal discussion about whether to change the rules about what companies need to reveal about CEO pay. Many companies would like less public disclosure. But after 15 years of looking at this issue, I think we need much more.
Sydney Morning Herald
09-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Wall Street CEO who made $10.5 billion last year
Karp was in second place in last year's report with nearly $US1.1 billion in gains, trailing Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, who gained $US1.4 billion. Musk's name is absent from the top-paid lists this year, but he has been fighting in the courts to retain a past, gargantuan pay package that a judge in Delaware has voided twice. The Tesla shares in that contested pay package were worth more than $US98 billion at the end of May, according to Courtney Yu, director of research at Equilar. Musk funnelled $US250 million into President Donald Trump's campaign efforts and was behind the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Facing declining sales at Tesla, he has left the White House for renewed work at his companies, which also include SpaceX, a rocket company and military contractor; X, a social media platform; and xAI, an artificial intelligence company. Classic compensation There's another important way to look at executive compensation: the estimated value of a pay package when it was originally granted. This annual snapshot must also be disclosed by corporations, thanks to government requirements that were tightened under Dodd-Frank. This more traditional approach, which the Times has covered regularly with the help of Equilar since 2012, tends to produce smaller figures for CEO compensation than the 'compensation actually paid' approach. But the numbers are still enormous, compared with the earnings of most working people. It, too, is being reevaluated by the Trump administration. The biggest payday in corporate America last year, using this traditional measure of executive compensation, went to Peter Gassner of Veeva Systems, a cloud-computing company focused on the life sciences, with a total compensation of $US172.4 million, nearly all from stock options and awards. The median employee at the company earned $US137,866. It would take a worker at Veeva Systems 1251 years to earn what Gassner did in 2024. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another. In a statement, Veeva said Gassner's compensation reflected a stock option grant that depended on the company's share performance and 'is intended as Mr. Gassner's only equity compensation through 2030.' The company said his $US475,000 salary is 'one of the lowest' for CEOs at publicly traded companies. Right behind Gassner on the top-pay list was Patrick W. Smith, aka Rick Smith, who was a founder of Axon Enterprise. It was previously called TASER International and was named for what is still Axon's best-known product: Tasers. The company says its product line also includes 'body cameras, in-car cameras, cloud-hosted digital evidence management solutions, productivity software and real-time operations capabilities.' Loading Smith's total compensation in 2024, using traditional accounting, was $US164.5 million. In a statement, the company said that number reflected 'a long-term, performance-based equity award,' which he would receive only 'over seven years, contingent on Axon meeting ambitious performance goals.' The median Axon employee was paid $US205,322 in 2024, handsome wages compared with salaries at most companies. Even so, because Smith's compensation package was so big, it would take an Axon employee 801 years to earn Smith's pay for just one year. And, using the compensation-actually-paid metric, he earned vastly more: $US385 million in 2024. Gassner at Veeva Systems raked in $US284 million using that measure. The big picture Corporate compensation filings are tedious reading, but they are a trove of information. That may be why they have never been uniformly popular in corner offices and why the Trump administration is beginning a process that could lead to the curtailment or demise of some of these disclosure requirements. In my view, that would be a shame. I would hate to lose access to any of the details being revealed by public corporations. Consider some of the highlights from this year's disclosures, compiled by Equilar. All told, for the 100 highest-paid CEOs of publicly traded companies in 2024, the median CEO compensation, much of it from stock options, was $US37 million, using the traditional accounting metric. That is a big number. Comparing it with what corporate employees make is revealing. The median worker at these companies was paid $US110,125, which is an astonishingly big pay gap. It would take the median employee — the one right in the middle of the income distribution — 357 years to earn what the median CEO earned in just one year. And using comparable, historical data that excludes the compensation at private equity firms, the pay ratio at publicly traded companies is almost 350-to-1, or, simply, 350, which is more than ever before. As I've pointed out before, pay disparities of this magnitude reflect levels of income inequality that were considered repugnant 50 years ago. The American social structure was flatter and CEO-to-worker pay ratios were lower then. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another. Through the 1970s, one study found, the pay ratio for big companies was less than 20. In the 1980s, Peter F. Drucker, the economist and Wall Street Journal columnist, said it felt 'about right' when CEOs received 10 to 12 times what workers earned. Loading Yes, it's better to be the boss. Anybody in the workforce already knows this without seeing any of these details. But the details matter. Happily, for investors and for rank-and-file workers, we now have considerable information on exactly how well CEOs are paid — and how much more money they receive than everybody else. The Securities and Exchange Commission will convene later this month for a formal discussion about whether to change the rules about what companies need to reveal about CEO pay. Many companies would like less public disclosure. But after 15 years of looking at this issue, I think we need much more.
The Age
09-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
The Wall Street CEO who made $10.5 billion last year
Karp was in second place in last year's report with nearly $US1.1 billion in gains, trailing Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, who gained $US1.4 billion. Musk's name is absent from the top-paid lists this year, but he has been fighting in the courts to retain a past, gargantuan pay package that a judge in Delaware has voided twice. The Tesla shares in that contested pay package were worth more than $US98 billion at the end of May, according to Courtney Yu, director of research at Equilar. Musk funnelled $US250 million into President Donald Trump's campaign efforts and was behind the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Facing declining sales at Tesla, he has left the White House for renewed work at his companies, which also include SpaceX, a rocket company and military contractor; X, a social media platform; and xAI, an artificial intelligence company. Classic compensation There's another important way to look at executive compensation: the estimated value of a pay package when it was originally granted. This annual snapshot must also be disclosed by corporations, thanks to government requirements that were tightened under Dodd-Frank. This more traditional approach, which the Times has covered regularly with the help of Equilar since 2012, tends to produce smaller figures for CEO compensation than the 'compensation actually paid' approach. But the numbers are still enormous, compared with the earnings of most working people. It, too, is being reevaluated by the Trump administration. The biggest payday in corporate America last year, using this traditional measure of executive compensation, went to Peter Gassner of Veeva Systems, a cloud-computing company focused on the life sciences, with a total compensation of $US172.4 million, nearly all from stock options and awards. The median employee at the company earned $US137,866. It would take a worker at Veeva Systems 1251 years to earn what Gassner did in 2024. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another. In a statement, Veeva said Gassner's compensation reflected a stock option grant that depended on the company's share performance and 'is intended as Mr. Gassner's only equity compensation through 2030.' The company said his $US475,000 salary is 'one of the lowest' for CEOs at publicly traded companies. Right behind Gassner on the top-pay list was Patrick W. Smith, aka Rick Smith, who was a founder of Axon Enterprise. It was previously called TASER International and was named for what is still Axon's best-known product: Tasers. The company says its product line also includes 'body cameras, in-car cameras, cloud-hosted digital evidence management solutions, productivity software and real-time operations capabilities.' Loading Smith's total compensation in 2024, using traditional accounting, was $US164.5 million. In a statement, the company said that number reflected 'a long-term, performance-based equity award,' which he would receive only 'over seven years, contingent on Axon meeting ambitious performance goals.' The median Axon employee was paid $US205,322 in 2024, handsome wages compared with salaries at most companies. Even so, because Smith's compensation package was so big, it would take an Axon employee 801 years to earn Smith's pay for just one year. And, using the compensation-actually-paid metric, he earned vastly more: $US385 million in 2024. Gassner at Veeva Systems raked in $US284 million using that measure. The big picture Corporate compensation filings are tedious reading, but they are a trove of information. That may be why they have never been uniformly popular in corner offices and why the Trump administration is beginning a process that could lead to the curtailment or demise of some of these disclosure requirements. In my view, that would be a shame. I would hate to lose access to any of the details being revealed by public corporations. Consider some of the highlights from this year's disclosures, compiled by Equilar. All told, for the 100 highest-paid CEOs of publicly traded companies in 2024, the median CEO compensation, much of it from stock options, was $US37 million, using the traditional accounting metric. That is a big number. Comparing it with what corporate employees make is revealing. The median worker at these companies was paid $US110,125, which is an astonishingly big pay gap. It would take the median employee — the one right in the middle of the income distribution — 357 years to earn what the median CEO earned in just one year. And using comparable, historical data that excludes the compensation at private equity firms, the pay ratio at publicly traded companies is almost 350-to-1, or, simply, 350, which is more than ever before. As I've pointed out before, pay disparities of this magnitude reflect levels of income inequality that were considered repugnant 50 years ago. The American social structure was flatter and CEO-to-worker pay ratios were lower then. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another. Through the 1970s, one study found, the pay ratio for big companies was less than 20. In the 1980s, Peter F. Drucker, the economist and Wall Street Journal columnist, said it felt 'about right' when CEOs received 10 to 12 times what workers earned. Loading Yes, it's better to be the boss. Anybody in the workforce already knows this without seeing any of these details. But the details matter. Happily, for investors and for rank-and-file workers, we now have considerable information on exactly how well CEOs are paid — and how much more money they receive than everybody else. The Securities and Exchange Commission will convene later this month for a formal discussion about whether to change the rules about what companies need to reveal about CEO pay. Many companies would like less public disclosure. But after 15 years of looking at this issue, I think we need much more.
Time of India
29-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
S&P 500 CEO pay up 10% as stock prices and profits soar
New York: The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% in 2024 as the stock market enjoyed another banner year and corporate profits rose sharply. Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can't cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits. The Associated Press' CEO compensation survey, which uses data analysed for The AP by Equilar, included pay data for 344 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between January 1 and April 30. Here are the key takeaways from the survey: A Good Year Live Events The median pay package for CEOs rose to $17.1 million, up 9.7%. Meanwhile, the median employee at companies in the survey earned $85,419, reflecting a 1.7% increase year over year. CEOs had to navigate sticky inflation and relatively high interest rates last year, as well as declining consumer confidence. But the economy also provided some tail winds: Consumers kept spending despite their misgivings about the economy; inflation did subside somewhat; the Fed lowered interest rates; and the job market stayed strong. The stock market's main benchmark, the S&P 500, rose more than 23% last year. Profits for companies in the index rose more than 9%. "2024 was expected to be a strong year, so the (nearly) 10% increases are commensurate with the timing of the pay decisions," said Dan Laddin, a partner at Compensation Advisory Partners. Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, said there have been some recent "long-overdue" increases in worker pay, especially for those at the bottom of the wage scale. But she said too many workers in the world's richest countries still struggle to pay their bills. Top earners Rick Smith, founder and CEO of Axon Enterprises, topped the survey with a pay package valued at $164.5 million. Axon, which makes Taser stun guns and body cameras, saw revenue grow more than 30% for three straight years and posted record annual net income of $377 million in 2024. Axon's shares more than doubled last year after rising more than 50% in 2023. Other top earners in the survey include Lawrence Culp, CEO of what is now GE Aerospac e ($87.4 million), Tim Cook at Apple ($74.6 million), David Gitlin at Carrier Global ($65.6 million) and Ted Sarandos at Netflix ($61.9 million). The bulk of those pay packages consisted of stock or options awards. The median stock award rose almost 15% last year compared to a 4% increase in base salaries, according to Equilar. "For CEOs, target long-term incentives consistently increase more each year than salaries or bonuses," said Melissa Burek, also a partner at Compensation Advisory Partners. "Given the significant role that long-term incentives play in executive pay, this trend makes sense."
