Related: Mailing In This Stapled Post
"Even as profit and sales fall, Staples doles out bonuses" by Taryn Luna | Globe Correspondent June 02, 2014
Staples Inc. performed so poorly in 2013 that none of its top executives qualified for cash bonuses. So the company’s board invented a one-time payout to reward the executives anyway.
Shareholders will get their say Monday on the controversial decision to spread about $500,000 in bonuses among four top executives at the struggling Framingham-based company. They will cast a nonbinding yet influential vote on executive compensation at Staples’ annual meeting in Palo Alto, Calif.
Institutional Shareholder Services, a leading firm that advises investors on proxy issues, recommended that shareholders vote to express their disapproval of the bonuses, dubbed the “2013 Reinvention Cash Awards.” The firm said the awards were created because the retailer’s weak results failed to trigger regular performance-based bonuses.
ISS also expressed concern about “non-rigorous goals” in the executive compensation plans and a lack of disclosure about the standards used to determine how much top managers were paid.
“Shareholders find it problematic when companies replace unearned performance awards with discretionary bonuses,” said John Roe, executive director of ISS Corporate Services. “It tends to unlink pay and performance and potentially lessens the motivation for executives to perform in future years.”
The awards raise the question of whether executives at poorly performing companies still deserve bonuses.
Seems like these questions have been being rai$ed for years, and yet the greedy money junkies keep grabbing loot and the wealth inequality keeps growing.
The Staples bonuses were doled for a year in which revenue dropped 5.2 percent and earnings declined 17 percent, compared to 2012.
Staples said the awards are single payments that recognize the extra work executives have assumed under the company’s reinvention strategy, which includes plans to shutter hundreds of underperforming stores and expand its Internet presence.
And they still made $96 million last quarter! Wow!
The retailer also described the bonuses as a method to retain executives and a tool to motivate employees who haven’t received a bonus in two years.
Like dangling a carrot on a stick in front of you, jacka$$!!
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In documents filed with regulators, Staples said the one-time bonuses amounted to 16 percent of the total annual bonuses each executive was eligible to earn. The company declined to answer questions about the bonuses.
Yeah, so they weren't being to piggy!
Ron Sargent, the chief executive, got a bonus of $299,810, bumping up his total compensation to $10.8 million last year. With the bonus, he earned slightly more than the median compensation of CEOs at Standard & Poor’s 500 companies last year.
Related: Median CEO pay crosses $10 million in 2013
That means half above, half below, not an average, and a "chief executive now makes about 257 times the average worker’s salary, and the industry with the biggest pay bump was banking." What a $hock.
Also see: Rank-and-file wages lag
And the wealth inequality grows and grows as more wealth is concentrated in the 1%.
Median Uber pay in NYC: $90,766
City is expen$ive, just like Bo$ton.
A recent Associated Press study found that chief executives earned $10.5 million in 2013, up 8.8 percent from 2012.
Chief financial officer Christine Komola received a one-time bonus of $49,257, for a total of $2.2 million in pay.
Joseph Doody, current vice chairman and former president of the North American commercial unit, and Demos Parneros, president of North American Stores and Online, each got cash awards of $88,856. Both earned about $3.2 million overall, according to Staples’ filings.
Revenue is down, earnings are down, and these guys are pa$$ing out the ca$h like there is no tomorrow -- and maybe there isn't.
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Now for that NON-BINDING vote:
"Shareholders signal dismay with Staples; Pay request voted down; leadership change sought" by Taryn Luna | Globe Correspondent June 02, 2014
In a rare step, Staples Inc. shareholders have voted their disapproval of a new executive pay package for top managers of the struggling retailer. They also approved a recommendation to require the company to install an independent board chairman.
Both votes are nonbinding and do not require the company to act. But they signal growing unrest among stockholders of the Framingham-based office supply chain....
I'm starting to get the feeling these looting f***ers won't get the signal until the head is separated from the body, or a few minutes before.
All I can say is what $cum. They may have the loot and re$ide in the upper cla$$, but they $tink like $hit $cum if you ask me.
Gary Hewitt, the director of research at GMI Ratings, a corporate governance research firm, said that shareholders are probably tired of the company moving in the wrong direction and want to rock the boat....
Sidown!
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A shareholder vote against a performance-based pay package is very unusual....
The votes demonstrate a sea change among Staples investors. Last year, an executive compensation package was approved by shareholders by a 98 percent majority.
Executive pay at Staples drew particular attention this year due to a one-time cash reward included in a wider restructuring of the compensation plan. Executives failed to qualify for annual cash bonuses last year because the company performed so poorly. But in March, the board approved relatively small, one-time bonuses for its top four executives anyway.
Sargent received a bonus of $299,810, bumping up his total compensation to $10.8 million last year.
Yeah, that's relatively $mall so what are you guys complaining about?
What I'm not complaining about is the $elf-identification of the wanna-be $lave known as a reporter. I've accepted who the new$paper is written of and for.
The bonuses were awarded for a year in which revenue at Staples dropped 5.2 percent and earnings declined 17 percent, in comparison to 2012.
And the business declines have not stopped. In the first quarter of 2014, profit fell 43 percent and revenue decreased 3 percent, compared to the same period last year.
I'm $ure another bonu$ is in order.
“Shareholders have a reason to be getting impatient here,” said John Core, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management with an emphasis in executive compensation. “Given their underperformance, you really would have thought [Sargent’s] pay would have gone down. Then these special bonuses don’t look good.”
None of the AmeriKan financial $y$tem looks good right now. It's all a giant loot job and ca$h grab based on fraud.
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That will staple together today's posts. I'm sorry I'm tanking Tuesday's items I had intended to get to, but a storm is coming in and I want to get off the computer. I promise I will return early tomorrow morning to begin work on them as well as some Wednesday selections.
UPDATE:
"Staples Inc. stock declined the day after shareholders registered their objections to the Framingham-based company’s executive pay practices — bonuses were awarded for 2013 even as sales and profit slumped — and called for the jobs of chairman and CEO to be separated."
