Tag: Travel Perks

Jet Perks Decline in a Year Marked by Travel Lockdowns

Jet perquisite spending reached a three-year low last year as top employees sheltered in place due to the Covid-19 pandemic. S&P 500 companies spent $93,071 on average per company on jet perks for top executives in 2020, down from $116,805 in 2019 and $115,729 in 2018, according to data from public company intelligence provider MyLogIQ.

“Companies took the tack of traveling less due to the personal health risk that might be involved in sending employees all over the world, but worker compensation and reputational risk also played into the decision to curtail jet use,” said Erik Nelson, director of executive compensation at Willis Towers Watson.

However, some companies opted to use corporate aircraft more frequently to fly executives to business-critical meetings while others extended corporate jet use permissions to directors and executives who didn’t previously have access for safety reasons, filings show. Other companies prohibited personal use of the corporate jet in 2020, opting to save trips for business purposes only.

Sources said the pandemic opened the door for compensation committees to reevaluate the need for corporate jet travel — how often and who uses the jet and how much the board should allow executives to spend on personal and business flights using the company’s aircraft.

Mark Zuckerberg Spent Almost $2 Million on Private Aircraft Last Year

Among the perks of being a chief executive officer are private security and the use of company aircraft. Among the CEOs who spent the most on private aircraft last year was Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Facebook. He spent $1,848,630 in 2020, $2,952,255 in 2019 and $2,597,320 in 2018.

Zuckerberg’s cost of private security was $13,439,634 in 2020, $10,463,717 in 2019 and $9,956,847 in 2018, according to data provided by MyLogIQ, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze public company data.

The Facebook proxy shows that the private plane costs are:

      “For purposes of reporting the value of personal usage of private aircraft in this table, we use costs provided by the applicable charter                  company, which include passenger fees, fuel, crew, and catering costs.” 

Corporate Jet Use Taxis for Takeoff in Pandemic

…Who gets to use the jet in a fractional arrangement varies by company, according to filings gathered by public company intelligence provider MyLogIQ. For example, at Sysco, jet use is made available to directors, named executive officers “and other members of management” for business purposes. At DTE Energy, executives and “other employees” are permitted to use the… Continue reading Corporate Jet Use Taxis for Takeoff in Pandemic

Pandemic Prompts Review of Jet Travel

While many executives continue to work from home, data shows that travel by corporate aircraft and chartered and fractionally owned jet fleets has begun to take off in recent weeks. That trend is likely to continue through 2020 as companies seek to reduce the risk of CEOs’ being exposed to the coronavirus. Accordingly, sources say boards should take a renewed look at corporate aircraft and private jet travel policies.

Meanwhile, the SEC has spent the past several years pursuing enforcement actions stemming from the improper disclosure of executives’ personal use of corporate aircraft, as Agenda has reported, creating a dynamic governance issue that is ripe for scrutiny.

“There has been a lot of pressure in recent years to keep [aircraft perquisite] figures down, so this is a perk that over the years has been in decline, along with country clubs and other things,” says Alan Johnson, CEO of compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates. “But I think the long-lasting implications of the pandemic are going to change everything. There’s business use of the planes, which is going to accelerate dramatically because there are fewer commercial flights … this is a different world.”

SEC Enforcers Listening to All Sources, Including Activists

Insurance underwriter Argo Group has been asked by the SEC to hand over documents related to perks awarded to its executives.

The SEC inquiry into Argo’s disclosures on executive perks, which was first reported by Bloomberg, comes after a proxy fight with Voce Capital earlier this year, and could indicate that activist investors have the ear of the SEC.

“The takeaway for boards is that the SEC listens to information from all sources,” says Brad Mroski, managing director at AlixPartners and former assistant chief accountant in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The better the fact pattern is laid out, the more actionable it can be by the SEC.”

Jet Perks: Which Travel Bills Were the Priciest?

The list of the top-10 biggest spenders on aircraft perks added a new member to its ranks: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

In 2018, Sandberg’s pay package included nearly $909,000 in aircraft perks, according to SEC filings analyzer MyLogIQ.

She ranks fourth on Agenda’s list of top-10 air travel spenders in the S&P 500.

First on the list is, once again, Mark Zuckerberg, Sandberg’s boss.

Zuckerberg’s corporate aircraft travel costs reached nearly $2.6 million, more than twice the amount of the next executive on the list, Tyson Foods chairman John Tyson. Tyson’s corporate jet travel amounted to almost $1.2 million, according to company disclosures.

A Peek at Executives’ Sky-High Aircraft Perks

Aircraft perquisites have taken a lot of heat lately, particularly from the SEC when executives’ travel perks aren’t properly disclosed. Agenda, using data pulled by SEC filings analyzer MyLogIQ, took a closer look at what was disclosed in regulatory filings. As a group, S&P 500 executives spent a collective $39.5 million on air travel in 2017, up from $32.6 million… Continue reading A Peek at Executives’ Sky-High Aircraft Perks