Interim CEO For $60,000 A Day

from the nice-work-if-you-can-get-it dept

It seems like every time we hear about a celebrity CEO getting fired, it's quickly followed by a report on their compensation -- which often seems ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with successful CEOs getting rewarded for building up a company (though, they're often given more credit than they deserve), but why is it that boards of directors repeatedly work into contracts plans to pay out millions of dollars for failures? The most recent case, of course, was HP's Carly Fiorina, who took with her $21 million in severance money (and the possibility to get more over time). Of course, that was after Craig Conway was handed $16.5 million for lying to his own board. The situation at HP, though, gets a little stranger. Not only did firing Carly cost them her severance, the company also paid their interim CEO $3 million for a whopping 52 days of work. This seems a tad excessive, and certainly makes you wonder what HP's board members are thinking. They just had to pay for the costly ouster of one CEO, and they're immediately paying a ton to someone for a couple months of service (not to mention the similar severance package they set up for the new guy). At what point do they learn that these sorts of packages do nothing to actually help the company, but put in place all sorts of incentives that will hurt the company?

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