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Equifax CEO Richard Smith Who Oversaw Breach To Collect $90 Million (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The CEO of Equifax is retiring from the credit reporting bureau with a pay day worth as much as $90 million -- or roughly 63 cents for every customer whose data was potentially exposed in its recent security breach. Richard Smith, 57, is the third Equifax executive to retire under pressure following the company's massive data breach revealed earlier this month, putting the personal information of as many as 143 million people at risk. Equifax said Tuesday that as a condition of Smith's retirement, he "irrevocably" forfeits any right to a bonus in 2017, an amount that under normal circumstances would have totaled more than $3 million -- the bonus he received in 2016 -- according to the company's retirement policy. But the CEO is still set to collect about $72 million this year alone (including nine months' worth of his $1,450,000 salary), plus another $17.9 million over the next few years. That's when the rest of Smith's stock compensation hits a few important milestones or "vests," allowing Smith to essentially put it in his bank account. Altogether, it adds up to a total potential paycheck of more than $90.1 million, according to Fortune's calculations based on Equifax securities filings.
This is exactly why these breaches occur and will continue to occur. When there is no penalty for incompetence and the worst that can happen to you is that you get to "retire" with a huge payout, then there is zero incentive to actually run your business properly.
a 90% marginal tax rate on income over $1 million a year (note, that's _marginal_, meaning you don't pay it until you hit that threshold, before that you're paying the same as folks in the lower brackets).
The 1%ers take care of each other and make sure that wealth accumulates at the top. Then that wealth is turned into power so they can get away with stuff like this. Money is power and we've let about 20,000 people have nearly all that power because we're not comfortable with taking it away from them. This stuff is gonna keep happening until we do.
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Of course, he already supervised the posting of his personal information along with everybody else's.
It is amazing (not) to me that the board will let this happen. If his contract gives him this cash regardless of competence, then the board made a poor contract. If the contract requires competence for compensation, the the board should not give out the cash.
Come on, man. You know this works. It's a club where they all pay each other.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I think there are two main problems with CEOs in the US.
1) Imperial CEO myth -- the idea that a single, all-powerful CEO is somehow the sole source of company success (and failure). I don't quite understand how this became true -- it's possible there are some corner cases where a change in CEO resulted in a significant company turnaround (like maybe Jobs at Apple). But for the most part, corporations are huge organizations that rise and fall based on group effort and lots of externalities beyond their control. Too many people are over-invested in the idea that a CEO is singularly responsible for a corporation.
2) Closed-loop compensation committees. Executive compensation committees wind up being board members of other firms, and many of them are executives at other companies are members of these committees. It's an conflict of interest and they use the Imperial CEO concept to justify ridiculous compensation packages.
What are you talking about? It's not like he is Osama Bin Laden for God's sake. He's yet another corporate white dude that probably only 100 people in America could pick out of a photo array right now.
This is Normal Shit.
Beware of the Leopard.