Word: cosse
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Many U.S. executives savored fat bonuses last month after their companies pulled in record sales and profits. But not Lawrence Coss, the chief executive officer of mobile-home lender Green Tree Financial, who in 1996 surprisingly topped the list of highest-paid corporate leaders--overshadowing such titans as the Travelers Group's Sanford Weill and Walt Disney's Michael Eisner. Whoops! To his dismay, Coss may have to repay $40 million of the $102 million bonus he received that year because Green Tree now concedes that accounting errors led it to overstate profits. Says the taciturn and reclusive Coss...
...those of Green Tree, which was founded in 1975 in St. Paul, Minn., and has long been an industry leader. Hapless Green Tree investors have seen their stock sink from $50 a share last October to just $19 before it rebounded a bit to close at $24 last week. Coss, 59, a former used-car salesman who sports jeans and cowboy boots off the job, has seen the value of his own shares fall from $330 million to $145 million. Such misery has plenty of company: more than 20 Green Tree competitors have lost anywhere from one-quarter...
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...
...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...