Northwet CEO Compensation Follies

[jenk]

First, a poll! [Poll #1208205]

1. Which Northwest company do you think has the biggest total compensation package for their CEO?
   
   Infospace
   
   The Times breaks down CEO James Voelker's compensation in this PDF as:
   

   Salary	Bonus	Stock Awards	Other
   $401,538	$106,200	$3.9 million	$33.7 million

   
   
   skydancer adds more info on this from his company's CFO:
   

   Infospace had paid a dividend...but Voelker was losing out because he'd never exercisized his options...so they made him a "Make Whole" payment of $30M

   
   (Infospace is one of those companies that tends to catch my eye. Partly it's that I once worked with the founder of the company. Partly it's that I gave into the badgering & bragging of friends and bought some Infospace stock in 2000. Partly that it crashed in a rather spectacular fashion, resulting in the founder being forced out. But it tends to catch my eye.)
   
   Edited to add: WaMu is getting a lot of votes. WaMu's Kerry Killinger was 3rd on the "top 20" list of overall CEO compensation with $14,364,883. #2, Clearwire, left his company, and so may have involved a goodbye deal of some sort. So WaMu would seem to be the #1 if everything's "normal" ... of course, how often do things remain "normal"?



2. Of these, company's CEO do you think has the smallest total compensation package?
   
   Microsoft
   
   It is close - Steve Ballmer's total compensation is $1,279,821, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos' is $1,281,840. Both do hold significant stock holdings in their respective companies.
   
   If you're wondering whether Bill made more than Steve, The Times notes that Bill Gates' 2007 compensation was not disclosed "because he was not among the company's five top-paid executives. The SEC requires companies to reveal pay for their CEO, chief financial officer and next three top-paid executives."



3. Of these, which company's CEO do you think has the smallest salary?
   
   Amazon
   
   From The Times:

   Bezos' salary has stayed the same since 1999.
   
   "When I'm leading a company, I like to have my shareholder hat on," Bezos, 44, said at Amazon's annual meeting last month in Seattle. "I always felt that I had enough ownership in the company that I didn't need additional incentive to do my job."

   Bezos owns "about 23 percent of the company, or 97.2 million Amazon shares".

Source: The Seattle Times.