$44.4 million for a few hours work

amadeus said:
So he gets 10% for a few hours of work and the government gets 90% for zero?
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Somewhat, but with his past earnings as CEO he will still rack u about 1000x what the average joe earns in a lifetime. Whats he going to spend it on? As we seen they're not to fond of opening new work places in the US. He can live off the money, when taxed, way better than a ton of people, hes just giving society a part of it back. Now depending on his background, the government has put in work for him, giving him (possibly) a school to go into when he was young, security, highways, freedom of speech... By taxing him and others like him we can get free healthcare for every citizen, better social welfare, create jobs, fix and expand the countries infrastructure all of which may help his business. Call me a Communist but whats he gonna do with such money? Fill a room with it and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck. We should be thinking about the greater good of society, where there are no poor, healthcare and education (including collage) are completely free and open to everyone.
 
Yeekim said:
So far, everybody is comfortably ignoring the fact that he didn't get this money just for "few hours work". He was also CEO of one of the merged companies before merger. The article does not mention for how long he worked there.
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Bears repeating. He was CEO of Progress Energy since 2007, before it merged with Duke Energy, after which he was due to continue as CEO of the newly merged company. He "resigned" on the day that the merger completed. Or, more accurately, he was pushed aside by board members of the former Duke Energy company, so that former Duke CEO James Rogers could take the helm, much to the chagrin of board members of the former Progress Energy company, who would not have voted for the merger had they known that Rogers would have become the CEO of the merged company. It's pretty clear from the timing of Johnson's departure that this was in the works for a VERY long time; Johnson deciding to resign so soon after the merger completed was a naked signal to his former board members that this was a ploy by Duke board members to get their man in the top job. If they wanted it to look like Johnson quit of his own accord, they would have at least waited around a while, power "sharing" in name only (while the real CEO was always Rogers), until Johnson left in a less attention-grabbing way.

Basically, this was an example of the worst kind of deceitful, vindictive boardroom politics, not of excessive CEO pay or golden parachutes. If you're going to grab your pitchforks and light your torches from the red hot flames of populist outrage, at least pick the correct thing to be outraged by.
 
Mise said:
Bears repeating. He was CEO of Progress Energy since 2007, before it merged with Duke Energy, after which he was due to continue as CEO of the newly merged company. He "resigned" on the day that the merger completed. Or, more accurately, he was pushed aside by board members of the former Duke Energy company, so that former Duke CEO James Rogers could take the helm, much to the chagrin of board members of the former Progress Energy company, who would not have voted for the merger had they known that Rogers would have become the CEO of the merged company. It's pretty clear from the timing of Johnson's departure that this was in the works for a VERY long time; Johnson deciding to resign so soon after the merger completed was a naked signal to his former board members that this was a ploy by Duke board members to get their man in the top job. If they wanted it to look like Johnson quit of his own accord, they would have at least waited around a while, power "sharing" in name only (while the real CEO was always Rogers), until Johnson left in a less attention-grabbing way.

Basically, this was an example of the worst kind of deceitful, vindictive boardroom politics, not of excessive CEO pay or golden parachutes. If you're going to grab your pitchforks and light your torches from the red hot flames of populist outrage, at least pick the correct thing to be outraged by.
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OMG, Mise makes so much sense. :run:
 
Mise said:
Bears repeating. He was CEO of Progress Energy since 2007, before it merged with Duke Energy, after which he was due to continue as CEO of the newly merged company. He "resigned" on the day that the merger completed. Or, more accurately, he was pushed aside by board members of the former Duke Energy company, so that former Duke CEO James Rogers could take the helm, much to the chagrin of board members of the former Progress Energy company, who would not have voted for the merger had they known that Rogers would have become the CEO of the merged company. It's pretty clear from the timing of Johnson's departure that this was in the works for a VERY long time; Johnson deciding to resign so soon after the merger completed was a naked signal to his former board members that this was a ploy by Duke board members to get their man in the top job. If they wanted it to look like Johnson quit of his own accord, they would have at least waited around a while, power "sharing" in name only (while the real CEO was always Rogers), until Johnson left in a less attention-grabbing way.

Basically, this was an example of the worst kind of deceitful, vindictive boardroom politics, not of excessive CEO pay or golden parachutes. If you're going to grab your pitchforks and light your torches from the red hot flames of populist outrage, at least pick the correct thing to be outraged by.
Click to expand...

...Well, I feel a bit ashamed now. I'm going to have to retract whatever I said earlier, with an apology for not researching the issue sufficiently enough.
 
Jolly is the one bathed in shame for setting up this strawman in the midst of the street and sitting back with shades and a cool drink to observe the confusion.

Jolly, it was a clumsy bit old chum, try and stick to the inner city. They fall for everything.
 
I honestly don't see why forty-four million for five years is much better than forty-four million for five hours. At least five hours would be an honest scam.
 
The payment was for his "work" as CEO of Duke. He was already well-compensated for his role as CEO of Progress. He did sign the contract that provided for the $44.4 million golden parachute should the board decide to royally screw the shareholders.
 
JollyRoger said:
The payment was for his "work" as CEO of Duke. He was already well-compensated for his role as CEO of Progress. He did sign the contract that provided for the $44.4 million golden parachute should the board decide to royally screw the shareholders.
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Well, yeah - it was the board royally screwing over the shareholders that should be the story here. The board really did screw the shareholders out of a LOT of money, and IMO that's what should be the focus of the story. The merger went ahead, and the golden parachute agreed by the Progress board, on the basis that Johnson would be the CEO of the new company; Progress board members probably assumed that Johnson would serve another 3-5 years or something (you know, a fair and reasonable amount of time for a CEO), and so a package worth ~$40-50m wasn't such a bad deal for them. Little did they know that the real plan was to get rid of Johnson and stick Rogers in charge.

Now, I don't know whether Johnson was in on it, whether he double-crossed Duke's board by resigning in such an attention grabbing way, or whether he was pissed off at being tossed aside by the board and so resigned like that to highlight the shenanigans to the regulators and Progress's board members. Either way, though, it's not as straight forward as the media is generally making it out.
 
I wouldn't be so quick to let the Progress board members off the hook. The Progress board members are likely well compensated officers of Duke/Progess or other large companies. The fact that they are so incompetent as to get so easily hoodwinked should put into question whether they are worth their high salaries in their executive capacity. You are right that the simplistic headline misses a ton of what is going wrong here.
 
JollyRoger said:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/07/06/duke-energy-ceo-severance-bill-johnson/

I just hope that he is getting a tax break on this. If the taxes are too high, where are we going to find someone willing to be a CEO for a few hours?
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What you aren't reporting is he had been the CEO of Progressive Energy for a LONG time, and this was a merger.
The two CEOs of Duke and Progressive were at some point going to CEO as partners... but I guess the Duke CEO opted to just buy out the other guy.

Way to be sensationalistic... been watching ye olde foxnews I guess...
 
JollyRoger said:
The Duke CEO is not buying out the other guy - the shareholders and consumers are.
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First, he is... he could have just pocketed that money (which is his long term plan, hence the buy out)...

Well, the stock went up 200% overnight, so I don't feel bad for them.

Why are you so worried about it?
 
Having power and personally making the purchase are two very different things. He is using assets owned by shareholders (he is not the sole shareholder) to pay for the few hours of that guy's time. But you are right that his power puts the wasteful use of other people's money on his shoulders.
 
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