Category: WSJ

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel Takes Home Hollywood’s Biggest Payday

The highest-paid executive in Hollywood last year isn’t a studio chief or a venture capitalist. It is Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Endeavor Group Holdings Inc., the agency which he co-founded nearly three decades ago. Mr. Emanuel’s 2021 pay package, revealed this month in Endeavor’s first-ever annual report as a public company, is valued… Continue reading Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel Takes Home Hollywood’s Biggest Payday

Discovery CEO Received $246 Million in Compensation in 2021, Including Big Options Grant

Discovery Inc Chief Executive David Zaslav received total compensation valued at $246.6 million in 2021, including nearly $203 million in options grants, more than sextupling his compensation from the year before, the company said in a securities filing Monday. Mr. Zaslav’s compensation package is the highest CEO pay reported by any S&P 500 company so… Continue reading Discovery CEO Received $246 Million in Compensation in 2021, Including Big Options Grant

Investors Are Becoming More Paranoid

WSJ columnist Jason Zweig used CompanyIQ® SEC Form N-CSR data to look at how portfolio managers discuss macro market risks in the latest edition of “The Intelligent Investor” newsletter.   Good afternoon. What’s up? This year, not much — except volatility. The Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, often called Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” is up… Continue reading Investors Are Becoming More Paranoid

These TikTok Stars Made More Money Than Many of America’s Top CEOs

TikTok stars are dancing their way to the bank. Some are making more than America’s top chief executives. Charli D’Amelio, who started posting videos of herself dancing on TikTok in 2019, brought in $17.5 million last year, according to Forbes, which recently ranked the highest-earning TikTok stars of 2021. With 133 million followers on TikTok,… Continue reading These TikTok Stars Made More Money Than Many of America’s Top CEOs

Minimum Tax Proposal Would Create Complications for Investors and Companies, Tax Experts Say

A Democratic proposal to tie taxes for big companies more closely to their financial accounting could distort public financial disclosures, inject politics into accounting rule-making and complicate financial reporting for large companies, according to accounting and tax experts and investors. The proposal, which passed the House by a seven-vote margin on Friday, is intended to… Continue reading Minimum Tax Proposal Would Create Complications for Investors and Companies, Tax Experts Say

Today’s Tech Founders Don’t Just Own the Company. They’re Also Getting Huge Pay Packages.

Archer Aviation Inc. is years from producing its only planned product, a four-passenger electric air taxi that the main U.S. regulator hasn’t yet certified. It hasn’t generated any revenue.

Still, the co-founders of this three-year-old company got a huge payday last month, a $99 million special stock award that stands to quadruple if Archer hits other milestones—thanks to a compensation package they negotiated before it listed publicly on Sept. 17.

For years, Silicon Valley was known as a place where leaders often bucked American corporate customs when it came to pay. Rather than receiving large stock grants and salaries, company founders like Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon. com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos took little or nothing. Instead, they benefited from the rising value of stock they got by starting their companies.

…Seven of the 10 most valuable compensation packages for U.S. public companies in 2020 were to CEOs of startups that listed publicly that year, according to public-company data-and-analysis firm MyLogIQ LLC. Five of those startups paid their CEOs more than any company in the S&P 500, an index that includes the largest corporations in the country.

Median Pay Shows How Companies Diverged in Their Covid-19 Response

Employees of Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST 0.45%) and Home Depot Inc. (HD -0.20%) saw demand for their services swell last year as homebound Americans stocked up on food and remodeled their homes. But Costco’s median worker made 16% less in 2020 than in the previous year while Home Depot’s made 21% more.

The divergence doesn’t mean one chain paid better than the other. It reflects how the pandemic and companies’ varied responses to it fundamentally altered the makeup of their workforces, fueling sometimes counterintuitive swings in median employee pay. (See what the median worker was paid at S&P 500 companies.)

Home Depot instituted a range of temporary pay increases to reward existing workers, lifting its pay structure. So did Costco, but that move was more than offset by a flood of new hires brought in to meet demand, tilting the balance of its workforce toward lower earners.