Here’s my favorite part:
In 1997 … Kaplan executives negotiated a pay package so large that it significantly reduced the bottom line in some years.
For instance, in 2002 the company recorded an expense of $34.5 million associated with the Kaplan compensation plan, an amount equal to the entire higher-education division’s profit that year. By 2010, Kaplan executives had cashed in $291 million of stock options.
… [One Kaplan executive who resigned] received his base salary, which was not disclosed, plus incentives and $46 million from the Kaplan stock option plan. There was also an agreement that if [he] didn’t go to work for a competitor, The Post Co. would pay him an additional $10 million in 2009 and $20 million in November 2011.
April 10th, 2011 at 11:54PM
John Kenneth Galbraith was right: “The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.”