Word: graef
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...number is expected to double this year. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down. Under new SEC rules, companies must provide, in their annual report to shareholders, some value for the stock options granted to executives. "Executives have been praying for this issue to cool down," says Graef ("Bud") Crystal, a leading compensation consultant. "But it's not, and they're going to stay on the hot seat...
...deductibility of stock options and other types of compensation to $1 million will really curb executive pay. For one thing, corporate officers who have cashed in their options can always go back to their boards to seek new incentives designed to get around the higher taxes. Says compensation specialist Graef Crystal: "What these tax policies will prove, if enacted, is that the answers to excessive corporate compensation lie outside Washington. It will not be until the shareholders begin to demand accountability that executive pay will come into line with reality...
...price declines. Critics complain that corporate boards lack clearly delineated formulas for setting pay and that they are not independent enough because chief executive officers often serve as chairmen of boards. The conflict of interest can be eliminated, they argue, by preventing the CEO from wearing both hats. Consultant Graef | Crystal charges that compensation committees are often loaded with other high- paid CEOs. "It's a cozy you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours arrangement," he says. "If you're a CEO, you don't want Mother Teresa or the Sisters of Charity on your compensation committee...
Mention the name Graef Crystal in a corporate boardroom, and you're likely to hear a collective growl. Crystal, 57, is the nation's foremost critic of high executive pay, and for half a decade he has been outraging business leaders with his high-profile columns describing just how overpaid they are. But Crystal is beginning to find it difficult to get his message across...
...easy to see why shareholders are unhappy with ITT. Explains Calpers chief Dale Hanson: "ITT is not one of the companies that bubble to the top when you think of performance." That's putting it mildly. According to Graef S. Crystal, a professor at the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley, ITT's total return to shareholders during Araskog's 12- year tenure has been in the bottom 30% of America's 406 largest companies. Yet over the same period, he notes, Araskog's compensation has rocketed from a level that was 87 times as great...