If you know of a company that rewards its officers and BOD more than IDCC, please let me know.
Happy to oblige. Apple's Steve Jobs raked in $90M in total compensation in 2002 while its stock dropped by 34%.
.........In January 2000, Apple's board, in an orgy of hero-worship, handed Jobs the largest option grant made on a single day in the history of mankind. The grant covered 20 million shares and carried a strike price of $43.59 a share. Shortly after the grant was made, I estimated its value at $471 million.
Apparently, an option of that size didn't stir Jobs to new heights of performance. On the contrary, he fell on his face, with the stock price plummeting to $18.30 a share by Oct. 19, 2001.
It was on that latter date that Apple's board decided that he needed more motivation. So he was handed a second option grant, this one covering 7.5 million shares and carrying a strike price of $18.30.
Alas, that second grant was yet another instance of trying to ignite wet straw. By this March 20, Apple's stock price had declined further, to $14.91.
It was at this point that the board, and Jobs, threw in the towel and agreed to exchange 27.5 million underwater option shares for 5 million free shares, worth at the time of their grant, $74.6 million.
The proof of the study's finding that a handful of CEOs received gargantuan stock options lies in the fact that just 11 of the 209 CEOs accumulated more than 50 percent of the $10.4 billion of option gains and paper profits earned by the entire group.
Heading the list was Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison, who amassed $819 million of option gains during the nine-year period and who also ended the period with a $233 million addition to his piggy bank of option paper profits.
Some other notable names were in the Top 11, including: Michael Eisner of Walt Disney Co. ($883 million of option gains and paper profits); Michael Dell of Dell Computer ($636 million); William McGuire of UnitedHealth Group ($500 million); and Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric Co. ($435 million).
Since Bachelder works at the cutting edge of executive pay trends and, in my opinion, is the leading lawyer in the U.S. advising executive clients, I asked him what he is seeing in executive compensation, and what the rest of us will be seeing in due course.
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