Getting Paid (Big Time) To Quit
from the my-valuable-connections... dept
A few weeks ago, we talked about just how much money could be made getting fired if you had the right severance package. Well, it looks like some top execs at Audiovox have one-upped that plan. They’re getting paid millions for quitting. Audiovox decided to get out of the wireless business, and sell it off to UTStarcom — a deal that makes plenty of sense. However, what might not make sense is that these two top execs are getting about $2 million each because the board has decided that selling off a piece of the company represents “a change of control at the company.” Of course, you can wonder why the company was paying these execs to sell off the company, or even why they’re getting credit for selling off the company when they only sold off one part of the company, but the story gets more bizarre. One of the execs is getting paid $16 million for “personally held intangibles,” since he’s quitting the company. These personally held intangibles include “personal contacts and personal and professional relationships with suppliers, customers, contractors, financiers, employees and ex-employees of the wireless unit.” Read that again. The company is paying him $16 million for the partnerships he built for the company. Isn’t that his job? Apparently not. His job was to get paid (handsomely, too) while building these relationships for the company which he would get to sell back to the company after the fact. In other words, everyone who has a job anywhere, start keeping tabs on all the work you’ve done for your employer. When you quit, you should be able to sell back all the work you already did (which you may have thought you already got paid for), and it may be worth even more than the first time they paid you.
Comments on “Getting Paid (Big Time) To Quit”
Outrageous
This is exactly the type of corporate corruption that led Enron into the disaster. Some executives come onboard with an MBA and manage to take away (read: steal) part of the public company (from public). What value other than doing their job did they invest into the company? – nothing, and the gain they make is purely a steal while being in control of the corporation. What they need is strict governance and more opportunity for small time shareholders to voice any concerns regarding executive abuse of power.
The good news
We’re only hearing about these kind of stories coming out of the crass business crowd, whose lives center around money. What does the media NOT say? We do not hear about Red Cross workers in Africa receiving 7-figure salaries, surgeons becoming the richest men on Earth, social workers who make billions from destroying families, public health profiteers who make millions from spreading diseases, police officers or firefighters who live in castles. The good news is that people whose professions are about bettering the world, are not rolling in dough (for now).