Justifying CEO Salaries

Salaries for CEO’s are a major expenditure for any company. The general rule is that you get what you pay for. The next most repeated seems to be that to get top talent then you have to pay top dollar. At least that is what executives say, probably as their reasoning for their salaries.


Recently the top 100 best paid CEO’s in the Philadelphia area was published. At the top of the list is Brian Roberts of Comcast who makes just over 24 million dollars. The range went down to number 100 and Jeffrey Graves of C&D Technology who makes just over $1.5 million dollars.

It really comes down to do you think executives deserve this type of compensation. Or asking what unique skills does one individual have that makes a company willing to pay these large sums to keep them in their organization.

These salaries can strike a bad note especially in this economy. As a consumer companies you use are raising prices, if you have Comcast I'm betting your cable bill hasn't gone down recently. Or companies are cutting back services in response to belt tightening but their executive team is still making these types of salaries. There are workers who are losing their jobs or are being asked to take pay cuts and yet the company justifies these salaries as necessary.

Banks that failed explained bonuses and salaries that were paid by saying if they don’t pay the talent will leave and that will make them less competitive and they will lose more money which will upset stockholders. When you consider these were "failing" banks, maybe it would have been a good idea to lose some of that talent.

What do you think; is there justification for these salaries? Are they really necessary to help a company stay competitive?

Let's close the CEO salary loophole.: An article from: Dollars & Sense

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