Word: coss
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After reading about Michael Eisner's $204 million salary and Lawrence Coss's $137 million in compensation, I find the answer to the question "How much is too much?" ridiculously obvious. What a tragedy to hand over increasingly exorbitant amounts of money to these CEOs as "pay for showing up, not pay for performance." Corporate America needs to rethink its priorities. YASMEEN AHMED San Francisco...
Another lavishly rewarded CEO last year was Lawrence Coss of little known Green Tree Financial, a company based in St. Paul, Minnesota, that finances mobile-home purchases. He was paid $102 million in salary and bonus. He was also given 2 million stock options valued at $35 million, presumably as an incentive. In his case too, shareholders have had much to cheer. They enjoyed a 47% return on their investment last year. But the huge numbers have people edgy. Could Green Tree not recruit a first-rate executive for, say, $50 million? "How much is too much?" asks Patrick McGurn...
...Coss founded Green Tree in 1975 to finance trailers and recreational vehicles. Mobile homes remain its biggest business--the company claims 28% of the market--as it diversifies into leasing office products and secured credit cards. Most mobile-home customers are first-time home buyers or retirees with annual incomes of about $26,000; the trailers cost an average of $34,000. Green Tree's break came in the 1980s, when the savings-and-loan crisis drove many thrifts out of the mobile-home market. The company moved quickly into the vacuum. The gamble paid off big when the mobile...
...Coss, the company's founder, keeps a low profile. A rider and an aficionado of Thoroughbred horses, he likes to relax on his South Dakota ranch or at another residence in Flagstaff, Arizona...
...prime continues, it will attract enough new competitors to act as a brake on interest charges. By that time, however, Green Tree's Coss won't be making $100 million. Shareholders recently voted to calculate Coss's pay using a new formula. If the company's performance continues at its current level, that would limit his salary and bonus to the $7 million range. Even at that, he seems like a good credit risk...