ROE v. Paid: Discretion Among Big Consumer Names

While the list includes some howlers, for the most part these companies show prudence.
By Stephen Schurr ,

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%.

Click here

to see entire ROE v. Paid: Consumer Discretionary chart.

* eComp didn't provide compensation figure, so Yahoo! figures were used.
Source: TheStreet.com, Bloomberg, eComp Online, Yahoo!

Click here to see entire table.

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