For Leading Exxon to Its Riches, $144,573 a Day

[riona]

So, how are your income taxes going?:wow:

By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: April 15, 2006

For 13 years as chairman and chief executive, Lee R. Raymond propelled Exxon, the successor to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, to the pinnacle of the oil world.

Under Mr. Raymond, the company's market value increased fourfold to $375 billion, overtaking BP as the largest oil company and General Electric as the largest American corporation. Net income soared from $4.8 billion in 1992 to last year's record-setting $36.13 billion.

Shareholders benefited handsomely on Mr. Raymond's watch. The price of Exxon's shares rose an average of 13 percent a year. The company, now known as Exxon Mobil, paid $67 billion in total dividends.

For his efforts, Mr. Raymond, who retired in December, was compensated more than $686 million from 1993 to 2005, according to an analysis done for The New York Times by Brian Foley, an independent compensation consultant. That is $144,573 for each day he spent leading Exxon's "God pod," as the executive suite at the company's headquarters in Irving, Tex., is known.

Despite the company's performance, some Exxon shareholders, academics, corporate governance experts and consumer groups were taken aback this week when they learned the details of Mr. Raymond's total compensation package, including the more than $400 million he received in his final year at the company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/business/15pay.html

[HereSince1628]

1. So you must wonder how this serves the shareholders who

could have had those dollars as dividends. In the new world order the Corporate robber barons treat their investor class no better than the serfs of labor.

[LARED]

3. Not defending the guy, but

The price of Exxon's shares rose an average of 13 percent a year

Is very impressive and serves the shareholders quite well.

Plus often stock performance is directly tied to the CEO's compensation. One reason his retirement package may seem obscene is because he got it done for the shareholders.

I'll say that I believe he would have performed as well with less incentive.

[HereSince1628]

7. Sorry this is just robbing the shareholders of their profits.

No one has done ANYTHING to deserve that sort of retirement.

Giving him credit for the rise in share price is to credit him with determing global oil prices and manipulating oil futures panics so that retail prices at the pump could jump and produce record profits.

Suppose he would take credit for any of that?

The Executive business class and those who dream of becoming part of it support this system and serve each other's interests. That class of folks is proving to be populated with a very large proportion of greedy pirates. Curiously they are behaving in a manner remarkably like what Marxist-Leninists have always accused them.

The single thing that everyone in the world, worker and investor needs to know is that selfish capitalism and capitalist geopolitics is a ponzi scheme that makes a few people very rich while denying others, even when they OWN THE COMPANY, a share of the profits, after all they are just ignorant uninvolved investors.

You can win in this game just two ways. You become a successful greedy member of the corporate executive class, or you take down the ponzi scheme and distribute the wealth fairly.

I think the leftist movements in Latin America are onto this notion, as was Andrew Carnegie who said of his own philanthropy--if I don't give it away, they will come and take it away.

[Telly Savalas]

8. In the last 5 years, however, Exxon's stock hasn't done much better

than that of its competitors.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=941167&mesg_id=941541

(Forgive me for being lazy and simply linking to an old post.)

[TheBaldyMan]

13. I dunno, profits increase 700% and share price increases 13%

you can get that kind of return of most shares (approx 12.5% return p.a. isn't exceptional)

IMO they were badly ripped off.

[acmejack]

2. I don't know how the poor guy manages to make do on that pittance!

It most really be tough in these in times. So many are struggling, so the poor Mr. Raymond joins the rest of in the soup line (not)...May these filthy greedy pigs get their karmic comeuppance soon!

[rucky]

4. Next week on Oprah:

how can a CEO live on less than $150,000 / day?

[corporate_mike]

11. Oprah made $210 million last year

http://www.forbes.com/celebrities2004/LIRO0ZT.html?passListId=53&passYear=2004&passListType=Person&uniqueId=O0ZT&datatype=Person

[corporate_mike]

12. Oprah actually made $225 million last year

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/53/O0ZT.html

[Canuckistanian]

5. Gee, how hard do you have to work to make Exxon profitable?

With an oil-friendly administration, global oil demand syrocketing, oil price gaming and lots of "events" which send the price soaring every time.

They could hire a monkey with an abacus to do their accounting and still be financially wildly successful.

[Vinca]

6. Stories like this make me wish I wasn't an atheist.

It makes we want there to be a hereafter and a judgement day. Ole Lee's making 2 years worth of an average person's salary a day - or more - and the cost of everything goes sky high because of transportation costs. Many, many people suffer. Making corporate profits at this level is not a CEO doing a good job, it's an obscenity.

[Toots]

9. I wonder if this is where some of the $100,000.00 per second we are

charging on our National Credit Card. The USA National debt is increasing by over one hundred thousand dollars a second.:wow: Have you ever heard that on MSM? :hurts: We are paying over a half million a minute just in Interest on that ever increasing debt.

[Catshrink]

10. Obscenity defined anew.

Who needs that much money? What the heck can he possibly do with it all?