Peter Rost's latest post on the Huffinton blog is a lot more reasonable than his last one, although he is still extremely critical (but this time using a far more rational tone) of Pfizer's CEO.
..."Let's take the compensation I used to enjoy once upon a time . . . half a million and more. Why would someone get this kind of money? In my case I delivered the #1 performance as measured by sales vs. budget within all of Pfizer. Let me translate that. My work resulted in Pfizer making $50 million they hadn't expected. Out of that I got about 1%. That's less than the cut a real estate agent receives when she sells a house. And since the company will continue to make this additional $50 million year after year, they might end up making an additional half a billion. Pretty good return on investment for paying a guy half a million. I still can't figure out how they could isolate me in an empty building after such a performance . . . but I guess it proves not everything is about money in a big corporation.Anyway, was I worth it to Pfizer? Of course I was. Do I feel bad about this? Not at all. But what about the other example I used? Pfizer has lost 40% of its stock value during the five years Hank McKinnell has been CEO, while competitors "only" lost 20%. Is this CEO worth tens of millions in salary every year and close to $100 million in a retirement package? This is a tricky one. We all know that if the company value had increased by 40% Dr. McKinnell would have taken full credit for that increase and claimed that's the reason he deserved his payout. But that's not the case. He did worse than most of his friends in PhRMA and perhaps no one could've done better. We just don't know..."-AMS
