Search results for Michael Brush

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• The 5 most overpaid CEOs

  Posted Oct 02 2009, 07:07 AM by admin
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  Filed under: investing, economy, Michael Brush
  Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money

  By Michael Brush

  A CEOs' job is to make a company perform for shareholders. So in a year like 2008, when the S&P 500 fell 37%, you’d expect CEOs to share your pain.

  Not so much, a look at the final numbers from 2008 by the Corporate Library shows:

  • While shareholders suffered miserably, annual pay for CEOs barely moved down at all.
     
  • And total realized pay, a broader measure that includes money from cashing out stock options and stock vesting, was off by 6.4%. (That's because the market crash made it harder for CEOs to earn money cashing out options. But 6.4% is a far cry from the 37% loss suffered by shareholders.)

  “Surely with the collapse in the economy seen last year, real pay should have declined by more,” says Paul Hodgson, author of the 2009 CEO Pay Survey, where these numbers come from. “If there were ever an argument that pay is fatally divorced from performance, then this surely is it.”

  • Related column: "Is lavish CEO pay on the way out?"

   The Library flagged five CEOs in particular as the most overpaid of 2008 for pocketing extraordinary sums of money even though their socks have deeply underperformed both the market and their peers over the past five years. Here's the list in order of increasing pay levels for lousy performance.   Read More...

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• Bank analysts see 'implosion' ahead

  Posted Sep 02 2009, 08:01 AM by admin
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  Filed under: Michael Brush
  Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money

  By Michael Brush

  Hold tight folks, it’s not over yet. Bank failures heated up this summer, but expect an “implosion” next year.

  That’s the key takeaway from a deep dive into second-quarter bank results by sector experts at Institutional Risk Analytics, now that all the numbers are all in.

  Despite the huge amounts of government money poured into the banks and a sense that conditions are better -- witness the big gains in bank stocks -- the number of banks getting the worst grades for strength actually shot up 12% in the second quarter.

  In a study released Sept. 1, IRA concludes that 2,256 banks deserve a failing grade, up from 2,012 in the first quarter. Banks getting an “F” grade included giant Citigroup (C).

  • 4 'zombie' stocks better off dead

  “Despite all of the talk and expenditure in Washington, the U.S. banking industry is still sinking steadily,” says Christopher Whalen of IRA.   Read More...

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• Study: Executive perks, stock pain go hand in hand

  Posted Jun 26 2009, 07:29 AM by admin
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  Filed under: Merrill Lynch, Michael Brush, CEO pay
  Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money

  

  This post was written by Company Focus columnist Michael Brush.

  For years whenever I’ve criticized companies like Merrill Lynch, Time Warner (TWX), KB Home (KBH) and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) for showering execs with excessive pay, outsized bonuses and juicy perks, two responses have inevitably followed.

  • The companies say they need to pay executives that much to attract the “best talent."
  • Free marketers tell me to leave them alone. The executives, after all, are so good at what they do that they deserve whatever they get. They earned it.

  Reality, however, is not so simple. Tellingly, excessive pay and perks often go hand in hand with poor stock performance -- not the kind of superior performance you’d expect from “the best talent” or overachievers.

  A quick look at the charts of the stocks of all the companies above bears this out. Each stock has either blown up or vastly underperformed the S&P 500 index over the past five years. Several studies have demonstrated a link between excessive pay and poor stock performance, and now a new one from the Corporate Library joins the chorus   Read More...

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