Big Companies Pay CEOs for Good Performance—and Bad
By: Wall Street Journal
May 17, 2019
The mechanics of chief-executive pay have grown ever more complex, but the rules remain simple: Strong performers get a raise. So do most of the rest.
For the fourth year straight, the biggest U.S. companies set CEO pay records in 2018, a Wall Street Journal analysis found, even as a majority delivered negative stock-market returns to their shareholders—a sign of the often-weak relationship between pay and performance.
Median compensation rose to $12.4 million for the bosses of S&P 500 companies last year, up 6.6% from 2017 and the highest since the 2008 recession, the Journal analysis found. Yet the median shareholder return for the companies was minus 5.8%, the worst showing since the financial crisis.
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