Special Report: Understanding Out-of-Control CEO Pay—and Why It’s a Problem

In July of 2023, right before the start of the actors’ strike and more than two months into the Hollywood writers’ strike, Disney CEO Bob Iger was attending investment firm Allen & Company’s annual Sun Valley Conference, an event known as “summer camp for billionaires.” It was there—the same day it was announced that his contract with Disney would be extended two years, the terms of which gave him the opportunity to receive an annual incentive bonus five times that of his base salary—that he called the writers’ and actors’ expectations for their contracts “not realistic.”

“I respect their right and their desire to get as much as they possibly can in compensation for their people. But you also have to be realistic about the business environment and what this business can deliver,” Iger said in an interview with CNBC. “It is and has been a great business for all of these people and it will continue to be even through disruptive times. But, being realistic is imperative here.”

…Though he earned less than Cook, Hertz CEO Stephen M. Scherr had one the most disparate ratios of U.S. public companies in 2022 according to data provided by Puerto Rico-based SEC compliance and disclosure intelligence company MyLogIQ (which is Fast Company’s partner on our CEO Fair Pay Report): $182,780,923 compared to $36,683, or a ratio of 4,983 to 1. Michael Rapino, the CEO of LiveNation, owner of TickerMaster—which has come under withering criticism for its handling of tickets to Taylor Swift’s summer tour—had a ratio that’s even more glaring: 5,414 to 1.