A look at 100 of the fattest pay packages handed to executives at publicly traded companies indicates they took in an average 6.6 million dollars each in 2009.
That’s a far cry from the $42,988 the average Canadian made.
Author of a report on the issue Hugh Mackenzie tells Bayshore Broadcasting News that means at about 2:30 PM on January 3rd, the average of the top 100 CEO’s would have made more money than the average Canadian makes in a year.
He says the best-paid executives made 155 times more than the average Canadian in 2009.
Mackenzie says CEO’s of Gold and Oil companies were again the top earners.
The biggest pay package of 24.2 million dollars went to Aaron Regent at Barrick Gold Corporation.
He can’t understand that executives are paid enormous amounts of money when the prices of oil and gold go through the roof.
He says there’s no linkage between a CEO’s impact on the price of gold or oil, and that’s what’s driving their pay.
As for what to do, Mackenzie says the Government could take action on the tax treatments of stock options, because they are being taxed as if they are capital gains.
He says its a curious linkage because the whole idea behind having special tax treatments for capital gains is that your compensating people for taking risks.
But Mackenzie says there’s no downside in the case of CEO options because if the share price falls below the exercised price, the CEO’s just don’t exersize it.
