The shareholder advocacy group As You Sow has released its seventh annual list of the most overpaid CEOs in the U.S., and many of the names are familiar from past lists put together by the group.
The annual report says that those companies on the list have performed significantly worse than S&P 500 companies that aren’t on it.
The economic disruption of the pandemic means that the upcoming proxy season, when most companies hold their annual meetings, could be a time of reckoning, said Rosanna Landis-Weaver, report author and executive compensation program manager at As You Sow.
Fund managers and pension funds have been showing increasing opposition to CEO pay packages, Landis-Weaver said, which is reflected in their votes. “More shareholders are taking another step in calling for accountability by voting against members of the compensation committees.
“Yet, as we detail in our report, executive compensation continued to increase, while performance at the companies that overpaid CEOs lagged.”
According to the report, entitled “The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs: Are Fund Managers Asleep at the Wheel?” the top 10 Most Overpaid CEOs were:
1. Sundar Pichai: Alphabet Inc.; compensation: $280,621,552
2. David M. Zaslav: Discovery Inc.; compensation: $45,843,912
3. Larry J. Merlo: CVS Health; compensation: $36,451,749
4. John C. Plant: Howmet Aerospace Inc.; compensation: $51,712,578
5. Robert Iger: Walt Disney Company; compensation: $47,517,762
6. Miguel Patricio: The Kraft Heinz Company; compensation: $43,297,480
7. Robert H. Swan: Intel Corporation; compensation: $66,935,100
8. Alan B. Miller: Universal Health Services; compensation: $24,473,240
9. Sheldon Adelson: Las Vegas Sands Corporation; compensation: $24,680,118
10. Lachlan Murdoch: Fox Corporation; compensation: $42,111,103
(These pay packages were evaluated before June 30, 2020. In some cases, CEOs presented here no longer hold that position.)
Between 2015 and 2020, the companies in the S&P 500 that have never been on As You Sow’s list beat the performance of those that are. The nonprofit group says that those not on the list had an annualized total shareholder return (which includes dividends plus stock appreciation) of 5.6%, significantly outperforming the annualized return of just 1.95% for the nine companies repeatedly appearing on the list.