Hullabaloo

Sunday, April 03, 2011

 
"It's not fair to condemn a whole program just because of a single slip-up"

by digby

Following up on tristero's post below:

Transocean Ltd. gave its top executives bonuses for achieving the "best year in safety performance in our company's history" – despite the explosion of its oil rig that killed 11 people and spilled 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

No biggie. And anyway, where are you going to find good people if you don't pay them?

Safety accounts for a quarter of the executives' total cash bonuses. The total bonus for CEO Steve Newman last year was $374,062.

According to calculations by The Associated Press, the total value the company assigned to Newman's compensation package was $5.8 million.

That figure includes an $850,000 base salary – a 34 percent increase from the prior year; perquisites of $622,057, which includes housing and vacation allowances, among other things; and the $374,062 bonus. Also included in the figure are stock options valued at $1.9 million and deferred shares valued at $2 million when those awards were granted in March 2010.

I'm sure he deserved every penny. And heck, if you had held him responsible what kind of "signal" would it send to other executives who are trying to maximize shareholder value --- the first and only American value that really counts? I don't think we want to live in a world where CEOs are afraid of what might happen if they fail to do their jobs or their risks don't pay off do you?

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digby 4/03/2011 02:30:00 PM |