Iger's compensation dropped slightly to $43.9 million in 2016

rob0519

Well-Known Member
Yeah, but wouldn't it be great if they re-infused some of this money into worker's salaries? I know I'm dreaming. I just wonder when enough is going to be enough.

Well, lets look at this. A Google search shows Disney employs approximately 195,000 people (this figure will vary by source) worldwide across all companies. Let's assume Iger's compensation was cut in half to $22 million. The remaining $22 million divided by 195K would get each employee about $112.00 before taxes. So for each $1 million dollars taken away from Sr. Management salary and bonuses, each employee would be about $5.12. Not exactly a windfall.
 

drizgirl

Well-Known Member
Well, lets look at this. A Google search shows Disney employs approximately 195,000 people (this figure will vary by source) worldwide across all companies. Let's assume Iger's compensation was cut in half to $22 million. The remaining $22 million divided by 195K would get each employee about $112.00 before taxes. So for each $1 million dollars taken away from Sr. Management salary and bonuses, each employee would be about $5.12. Not exactly a windfall.

In that case. Cut everyone's pay by $112 and give Iger another $22 million raise!!!!!
 

LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
In that case. Cut everyone's pay by $112 and give Iger another $22 million raise!!!!!

Better yet, raise base pay for hourly and some salaried employees and take the hit in profit. Companies are eventually going to hit the tipping point that "starving" employee salaries will have negative long term impacts on the company. At least that's my hope. But as long as Wall Street and BODs continue to reward CEOs that do nothing more than pump up stock prices, nothing will change.

Most of us will never meet Iger, Chappie or any of the other Disney VPs. However, we constantly interact with low paid, front line, overworked CMs. That's where Disney needs to invest. I tip my hat to those workers making $8 - $9 an hour who have to put up with the crap I see some guests hurl their way. And they keep on smiling....

Invest in your employees first....they make or break your business.
 

Bandini

Well-Known Member
Better yet, raise base pay for hourly and some salaried employees and take the hit in profit. Companies are eventually going to hit the tipping point that "starving" employee salaries will have negative long term impacts on the company. At least that's my hope. But as long as Wall Street and BODs continue to reward CEOs that do nothing more than pump up stock prices, nothing will change.

Most of us will never meet Iger, Chappie or any of the other Disney VPs. However, we constantly interact with low paid, front line, overworked CMs. That's where Disney needs to invest. I tip my hat to those workers making $8 - $9 an hour who have to put up with the crap I see some guests hurl their way. And they keep on smiling....

Invest in your employees first....they make or break your business.
I agree, but I don't think anything will change until our country's culture changes. That CEO of Wells Fargo received a huge pay out instead of the jail time he deserved. It's pretty sickening.
 

Luxe

Well-Known Member
Better yet, raise base pay for hourly and some salaried employees and take the hit in profit. Companies are eventually going to hit the tipping point that "starving" employee salaries will have negative long term impacts on the company. At least that's my hope. But as long as Wall Street and BODs continue to reward CEOs that do nothing more than pump up stock prices, nothing will change.

Most of us will never meet Iger, Chappie or any of the other Disney VPs. However, we constantly interact with low paid, front line, overworked CMs. That's where Disney needs to invest. I tip my hat to those workers making $8 - $9 an hour who have to put up with the crap I see some guests hurl their way. And they keep on smiling....

Invest in your employees first....they make or break your business.
Umm did any of those CMs contribute to the incredible legacy Sir Iger has left behind him? Just look at Shanghai for example... who cares about the CMs when Iger is pumping out the next generation of Disney magic!

:rolleyes:
 

gonzoWDW

Well-Known Member
Executive compensation is meant to reflect value added as the steward (s) of the company, right? Ensure they focus on developing a long term, healthy company, beyond the 2-4 year Wall Street horizon. No cash bonuses; everything in stock vests in increasing portions year over year. I would take it in a heartbeat, and it forces me to make sure all decisions are with the company's best interest at the forefront.

With cash bonuses, all that really matters is this year's performance.

*For people whose decisions actually impact the company's direction
 

LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
I agree, but I don't think anything will change until our country's culture changes. That CEO of Wells Fargo received a huge pay out instead of the jail time he deserved. It's pretty sickening.

Go back before that. None of the individuals involved in the sub-prime mortgage fraud ever saw jail time. What a difference 20 years makes - Micheal Milkin went to jail for several years over his junk bond scheme in the 1980s. Those involved in the S&L debacle also saw jail time. Now they reward you with a multi-million dollar bonus. And CEO compensation is back at levels higher than before the 2008 financial crisis. While some people still can't find jobs that pay a living wage and are still loosing their homes.

I have a degree in finance. I've spent over 20 years in the financial field. I know what unchecked financial speculation can do to an economy - that's what gave us 1929 and 2008. And I'm seeing things that are making me very nervous.... One reason the market is approaching 20,000? Because Wall Street knows Dodd-Frank will be repealed.
 

LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
Executive compensation is meant to reflect value added as the steward (s) of the company, right? Ensure they focus on developing a long term, healthy company, beyond the 2-4 year Wall Street horizon. No cash bonuses; everything in stock vests in increasing portions year over year. I would take it in a heartbeat, and it forces me to make sure all decisions are with the company's best interest at the forefront.

With cash bonuses, all that really matters is this year's performance.

*For people whose decisions actually impact the company's direction

Go back 20-30 years ago. Executive compensation was more closely tied to real COMPANY performance, not the closing value of the company's stock. Executive pay was maybe 10 times that of a worker...at the Blue Chips. Now? I don't even want to think about it....

Edit: as long as Wall Street continues to reward CEOs for short term performance via stock value, there will be no long term....
 

ParentsOf4

Well-Known Member
Quoting in part from an interesting Ted Talk, which has some bearing on the subject:

Why good leaders make you feel safe

You know, in the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain. In business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain. We have it backwards. Right?

....

The world is filled with danger, things that are trying to frustrate our lives or reduce our success, reduce our opportunity for success. It could be the ups and downs in the economy, the uncertainty of the stock market. It could be a new technology that renders your business model obsolete overnight. Or it could be your competition that is sometimes trying to kill you. It's sometimes trying to put you out of business, but at the very minimum is working hard to frustrate your growth and steal your business from you. We have no control over these forces. These are a constant, and they're not going away.

The only variable are the conditions inside the organization, and that's where leadership matters, because it's the leader that sets the tone. When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first, to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results, so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen.

...

You see, if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time and energy to protect ourselves from each other, and that inherently weakens the organization. When we feel safe inside the organization, we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities.

The closest analogy I can give to what a great leader is, is like being a parent. If you think about what being a great parent is, what do you want? What makes a great parent? We want to give our child opportunities, education, discipline them when necessary, all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves. Great leaders want exactly the same thing. They want to provide their people opportunity, education, discipline when necessary, build their self-confidence, give them the opportunity to try and fail, all so that they could achieve more than we could ever imagine for ourselves.

Charlie Kim, who's the CEO of a company called Next Jump in New York City, a tech company, he makes the point that if you had hard times in your family, would you ever consider laying off one of your children? We would never do it. Then why do we consider laying off people inside our organization? Charlie implemented a policy of lifetime employment. If you get a job at Next Jump, you cannot get fired for performance issues. In fact, if you have issues, they will coach you and they will give you support, just like we would with one of our children who happens to come home with a C from school. It's the complete opposite.

This is the reason so many people have such a visceral hatred, anger, at some of these banking CEOs with their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures. It's not the numbers. It's that they have violated the very definition of leadership. They have violated this deep-seated social contract. We know that they allowed their people to be sacrificed so they could protect their own interests, or worse, they sacrificed their people to protect their own interests. This is what so offends us, not the numbers. Would anybody be offended if we gave a $150 million bonus to Gandhi? How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Teresa? Do we have an issue with that? None at all. None at all. Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.

...

Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank. I know many people at the seniormost levels of organizations who are absolutely not leaders. They are authorities, and we do what they say because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people who are at the bottoms of organizations who have no authority and they are absolutely leaders, and this is because they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them. This is what a leader is.​

Bob Iger represents a management style that largely views customers and employees as the opposition. "The more I take from my customers and my employees, the more shareholders get to keep. The more I get to keep." Iger sacrifices customers and employees so he can personally gain. Iger views them as part of the problem.

Great leaders view them as part of the solution.
 
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LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
Quoting in part from an interesting Ted Talk, which has some bearing on the subject:

Why good leaders make you feel safe

You know, in the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain. In business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain. We have it backwards. Right?

....

The world is filled with danger, things that are trying to frustrate our lives or reduce our success, reduce our opportunity for success. It could be the ups and downs in the economy, the uncertainty of the stock market. It could be a new technology that renders your business model obsolete overnight. Or it could be your competition that is sometimes trying to kill you. It's sometimes trying to put you out of business, but at the very minimum is working hard to frustrate your growth and steal your business from you. We have no control over these forces. These are a constant, and they're not going away.

The only variable are the conditions inside the organization, and that's where leadership matters, because it's the leader that sets the tone. When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first, to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible results, so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen.

...

You see, if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time and energy to protect ourselves from each other, and that inherently weakens the organization. When we feel safe inside the organization, we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities.

The closest analogy I can give to what a great leader is, is like being a parent. If you think about what being a great parent is, what do you want? What makes a great parent? We want to give our child opportunities, education, discipline them when necessary, all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves. Great leaders want exactly the same thing. They want to provide their people opportunity, education, discipline when necessary, build their self-confidence, give them the opportunity to try and fail, all so that they could achieve more than we could ever imagine for ourselves.

Charlie Kim, who's the CEO of a company called Next Jump in New York City, a tech company, he makes the point that if you had hard times in your family, would you ever consider laying off one of your children? We would never do it. Then why do we consider laying off people inside our organization? Charlie implemented a policy of lifetime employment. If you get a job at Next Jump, you cannot get fired for performance issues. In fact, if you have issues, they will coach you and they will give you support, just like we would with one of our children who happens to come home with a C from school. It's the complete opposite.

This is the reason so many people have such a visceral hatred, anger, at some of these banking CEOs with their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures. It's not the numbers. It's that they have violated the very definition of leadership. They have violated this deep-seated social contract. We know that they allowed their people to be sacrificed so they could protect their own interests, or worse, they sacrificed their people to protect their own interests. This is what so offends us, not the numbers. Would anybody be offended if we gave a $150 million bonus to Gandhi? How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Teresa? Do we have an issue with that? None at all. None at all. Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.

Bob Iger represents a management style that largely views customers and employees as the opposition. "The more I take from my customers and my employees, the more shareholders get to keep. The more I get to keep." Iger views them as part of the problem.

Great leaders view them as part of the solution.

That pod cast couldn't have said it better. Sad that corporate climate had done a 180, at the expense of its workers. The adage used to be leaders are born, not made. I remember reading an article in the Harvard Business Review disputing that. How did we go so wrong?
 

LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
God, I so want to post a comment regarding CEO compensation, worker pay and how they aren't mutually exclusive and ignoring the disparity is damaging to the long term health of an organization and our economy, and expand on corporate climate and quality management from the Ted Talk Parents posted, but I might border a little on the political side and get slapped by the Mods....

So I'm going to try this.

Back in B school, they gave us several real world problems to solve, increasing in complexity and scope as our skills at analysis improved. For my senior thesis (problem actually, but it was the last one given and usually a MAJOR U.S . Corp, so we called them thesis, mainly to tick off the grad students ;)). My company? You guessed it...Disney. Mid 1980s, just as Eisner was assuming the helm. And Sony was making a real push to purchase Disney, at least the studio part, which was floundering because Roy was absolutely insistent on sticking to Walt's decree of family entertainment only. Ignoring that movies had changed. The grumpy old men were dying. In my research I discovered that Disney was making more adult oriented films - under Touchstone. And their first film? Splash. I had admiration for Eisner and those that found a way to move the studios in the direction audiences tastes were going, but still try to keep that spirit of Walt (and make Roy happy). I know at the end of his tenure at Disney, Eisner kinda went off the rails. Not sure he or the company ever really recovered from the tragic death of Frank Wells and the departure of Katzenberg (some might disagree about Katzenberg). Plus the public battle with Roy didn't help. But I'm starting to disgress... My point in relaying this story is that managers who think outside the box, truly understand their corporate climate and their employees are the most valuable asset of the company (some speculate that what drove a wedge between Eisner and Katzenberg and resulted in his firing is those in the industry giving Jeffrey 80% credit for the renaissance in Disney animation - no one ever said CEOS, even the best and most talented - don't have big egos) are successful and so is the company...and its employees.

And this is what is starting to cause some rumblings in my Force...and worries about my daughter's financial future. In all my problems from B school, if I'd been handed one in which the CEO had filed for bankruptcy multiple times, the first sentence in my analysis and recommendations (we couldn't just say what was right and wrong, we had to develop viable strategies to fix the problems. My suggestion for Disney? Build a working studio somewhere on those 27,000 acres Walt bought in the mid 60s. I'd been to Universal in Hollywood several times - my parents neighbor was a music director there and I would go to the studio with him every time I was home on break. Saw the starts of their tour. Witnessed the interest in visitors touring a real Hollywood Studio. Wouldn't folks kill to tour a functioning Disney studio? That and a little bird mentioned something about Universal's plan for Florida. Shortly after I turned in my paper, Universal made their announcement. Eisner followed up with Disney-MGM soon after. Sensing an employment opportunity, I mailed my paper to Glendale...never heard anything) would be fire that guy's behind. Hence the rumblings in my Force...which will only increase after next Friday. But hey, I'll be in the Disney bubble that day.

Okay, post done.
 

LAKid53

Official Member of the Girly Girl Fan Club
Premium Member
I'm trying to figure out how to get what Parentsof4 posted to my CEO, COO and SR. VP of HR without being disowned by the corpororate family.

Anonymous email? Leave something on the copier?

Edit: as you can see from my previous posts, I wasn't the typical B school student. Unfettered greed worried me. Rewarding owners at the expense of those who by their talents, dedication and hard work earned those profits which paid dividends to said owners made me angry. One day, I made a statement in one of my classes as we were discussing the drawbacks of redistributing wealth, that government has a moral and legal obligation (that social contract referenced in the Ted Talk podcast) to protect the most vulnerable and that can be easily achieved, and should be, by the redistribution of wealth. You could have heard a pin drop after that. My professor gave me the strangest look and I was expecting the dean to enter our classroom and throw me out - of both the classroom and B school. Who let this interloper in? She just said taxes are good!

From that day forward, I've kinda thought I'm learning the secrets of the corporate world to make sure they are contained.
 
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HauntedPirate

Park nostalgist
Premium Member
Ever wonder why companies buyback their stock?

"...$8.8 million in stock awards, $8.5 million in option awards..."

And the lower that option price, the more guys like Iger end up making when they exercise their options after continued stock buybacks increase the share price.
 

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