ROE v. Paid: Discretion Among Big Consumer Names
Executive compensation approached something resembling reason last year among companies in the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary category, which includes the media, retail, restaurant and homebuilding industries.
In 2001, some gaudy payouts were lavished upon executives whose companies notched spotty performance that year, such as former chief Gerald Levin's $77.3 million at
AOL Time Warner
(AOL)
and Jacques Nasser's $17.9 million compensation from
Ford Motor
(F) - Get Report
.
While 2002 didn't mark the end of hefty payouts -- witness the $38.8 million take for
KB Home's
(KBH) - Get Report
Bruce Karatz and H. Lee Scott's $21.7 million bonanza at
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
-- executive compensation in this category was curtailed a bit, even at some of the biggest companies, where compensation tends to be higher.
Indeed, a few high-profile chieftains such as Meg Whitman at
eBay
(EBAY) - Get Report
took home a mere six-figure income. But as today's ROE v. Paid: Consumer Discretionary chart shows, eBay didn't exactly light up the scoreboard on the return-on-equity side either.
As part of
TheStreet.com's
coverage of executive pay, the ROE v. Paid charts compare a company's average return on equity -- or ROE, a handy measure of how effectively a CEO puts shareholder money to use -- over the past five years with the chief executive's executive compensation. For compensation, we used the most recent figures provided by Aon Consulting's
eComp Database -- the numbers include salary, bonus and options.
How did the category measure up? This is a group that features some of the steadiest return-on-equity performers around: slot-machine maker
International Game Technology
(IGT) - Get Report
, auto-parts retailer
AutoZone
(AZO) - Get Report
and discount-clothing retailer
TJX Cos.
(TJX) - Get Report
.
But media and Internet giants don't avail themselves especially well from a ROE standpoint:
Disney's
(DIS) - Get Report
five-year average ROE was just 5%, but it was better than
Viacom's
(VIA.B)
0% and
AOL Time Warner
(AOL)
, whose one-year ROE was a negative 96.34%.
to see entire ROE v. Paid: Consumer Discretionary chart.
* eComp didn't provide compensation figure, so Yahoo! figures were used. |