Paul Luvera Journal

Tom Donohue is the 74 year old president and CEO of the United States Chamber of Commerce, a position he has held since 1997. Thanks to his efforts the Chamber has been able to spend $136 Million dollars on lobbying Congress for laws favorable to big business. Of course, he enjoys the perks of his position. He travels around Washington DC in a chauffeured limousine and flies around the globe in a private jet. With a pay check of $5 million dollars…

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I've complained many times about golden parachutes and obscene amounts paid to CEO's of corporations when, under their leadership, they have run the corporation into the ground. See for example https://paulluverajournalonline.com/weblog/2007/02/eddie_bauer_pay.html. Now we see Alan Fischman of Washington Mutual jumping the sinking ship with $19 Million. This is a man who has been on the job all of an entire three weeks. He signed on with a $7.5 signing bonus and got a $16.6 million severance payment. Not bad pay…

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A recent news article by Forbes.com alerted me to the financial crime of bad CEO’s walking away with piles of undeserved money. I’ve complained about this many times, but the pattern never changes. Boards of corporations don’t protect the shareholders from this kind of dollar wasting. Charles Prince CEO of Citigroup announced he was leaving the post. Of course, there is a trail of dirty laundry he leaves behind. Namely an $8 to $11 Billion write down in subprime mortgage…

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The Seattle PI reports that the new CEO of the Eddie Bauer Company will be paid over $3 Million dollars for his three year contract even though it is a financially failing company. I previously commented on the company’s payment of a golden parachute of $8.4 million to it’s departing CEO. (2/7/2007). This was an overpayment by a company that was fighting going under to a departing CEO even though his job performance was below expectations and the company was…

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The Associated Press reports another corporate CEO gross overpayment, a subject I´ve complained about so many times in the past. In a filing with the federal government, Ford disclosed it paid its CEO Alan Mulally a staggering $39.1 million dollars during the first four months of his term as CEO. So, what did Mr. Mulally do to earn this windfall? Ford, as the second biggest automaker, lost $12.7 Billion, yes,"billion" in 2006 so it couldn´t be his job performance in…

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The Associated Press reports another scandalous salary and bonus paid to a CEO at the expense of employees and shareholders. Washington Mutual’s CEO Kerry Killinger was paid more then $18 Million last year in salary, stock. options and compensation. He also had use of the bank’s corporate jet for his personal use as well as a bonus of $4.1 million. Of course, during the same period, the Seattle based company cut 10,000 jobs and the company struggled with loss of…

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I’ve previously reported on the connection between Vice President Dick Cheney and the Texas based Halliburton Company: Vice President Richard Cheney – Unrestrained Arrogance 1/31/07. They are joined at the hip with the result taxpayers have been robbed by this corporate giant. It is a classic "military industrial complex" illustration of what is wrong with unregulated revolving door relationships between big business and government. Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton whose world wide business activities involve a number of…

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One of my pet peeves is the frequent occurrence of paying offensive amounts of money to outgoing CEO’s at the expense of shareholders and prices paid by their customers. (Overpaid CEO’s & Tort Reform 1/26/07) Now we have another example here in Seattle which I’ve written about before – Another Golden Parachute for a CEO 1/3/07. Fabian Mansson was recruited by Eddie Bauer’s parent company, Spiegel Group in 2002 to save Eddie Bauer from financial distress. A year later Spiegel…

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