It was a lucrative send-off: Hastings’ total pay last year was $51.07 million, $49.4 million of it in options. It also announced that Hastings would step down, with COO Greg Peters joining Sarandos as co-CEO. To stem the bleeding, Netflix announced it would introduce a lower-priced ad-tier subscription model. Yet the two men at the top saw their compensation packages increase. Netflix shares plunged more than 50% in 2022 as investors grew concerned over ballooning costs and sputtering subscriber growth. Hastings/Sarandos pay ratio to median employee: 234/230 The company is eliminating 7,000 jobs as it looks to cut costs. A disastrous succession that was still lucrative for those at the top. Bob Iger, who retired in 2021 and then unretired less than a year later to clean up things, earned a prorated bonus and another $4.4 million award to bring his pay package to $15 million. In addition to the $24.2 million he earned in his final year, he got a $20 million severance package. During Chapek’s tenure Wall Street soured on Disney’s spending on its streaming service, to say nothing of a near employee revolt over his stumbling response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Chapek! It was a rocky time atop the Magic Kingdom for the Disney chief, who was booted from his post in November just months after the company’s board renewed his contract. That creates a scenario where it’s heads, I win tails, I win.” “It’s determined relative to what every other CEO is being paid. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. “Other than bonuses, much of a CEO’s compensation isn’t tied to a company’s performance,” says Charles Elson of the University of Delaware’s John L. And those that don’t have dual-class ownership, where a select few shareholders wield inordinate influence, still determine pay in comparison to the Comcasts and Foxes of the world. Some of these companies, including Fox and NBCUniversal parent Comcast, are tightly controlled, meaning their compensation committees don’t have to fear angry shareholders. And Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch oversaw a news organization so eager to provide a platform for those peddling 2020 presidential election lies that it just paid a $787 million libel settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, while a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic looms. NBCUniversal’s Jeff Shell was fired for cause after failing to disclose an affair with an employee. What kind of steady leadership did investors get in return for these mega paydays? Well, Disney kicked out Bob Chapek after three years, cushioning his blow with a $20 million golden parachute. “When things are going well, boards always say, ‘Oh, my God, they’re all geniuses,’ and when things go bad it’s always blamed on external factors and not the person in charge.” “Compensation for these CEOs never goes down in bad times as much as it goes up in good times,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. The most eye-popping pay packages are usually inflated by present-day value of stock options that can’t be immediately cashed in but can still provide the wrong kind of incentive to keep stock prices high. Even those executives who took pay cuts raked in millions in bonuses, salaries and perks that left them firmly ensconced in the 1% of the 1%. Apple’s Tim Cook’s total compensation neared $100 million, while Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai’s topped $225 million. Netflix’s Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos got double-digit bumps even as their company suffered a historic selloff. Yes, most of these corporate chieftains trimmed their pay packages … but not all of them did. Oh, and screenwriters are on strike, while directors and actors are threatening to join them when their contracts expire next month.īut for the media moguls and tech entrepreneurs who run the major conglomerates, it’s business as usual in one important respect. Layoffs are being enacted monthly as a spirit of cut, cut, cut grips Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Economists are fretting about a recession.
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