McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook gets a 368% pay raise

[tynopik]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...donalds-former-new-ceo-big-pay-bumps/2078001/

In 2012 McDonald's gave it's CEO a salary of $13.8 million

So a salary of $7.91 million actually reflects a cut in CEO compensation of 43%

 

[soulcougher73]

Dont worry it will trickle down to the workers.....

 

[Jaepheth]

Could have installed quite a few self order machines with that money.

I wonder which company will be the first to install an AI CEO.

 

[gorcorps]

Wonder how many raises they could have given employees with that money.

Things like this just disgust me.

For 2012 (that's the best I could find) they had 1.9 million employees including franchises (80% of the employees are in franchises).

So if his increase of $6.22million for the year was evenly distributed among everyone else, they would each get an extra $3.27 for the entire year. For a full time, 40 hour per week employee that would be a raise of $.0015 per hour.

I'm so god damned sick of people pointing at the salary of the CEO as the cause of all their fucking problems. The CEO could make zero dollars in this case and everyone else would have to work 5 hours just to earn LITERALLY one single extra fucking penny. What in the hell would possess you to think that this salary is even a fraction of a drop in the bucket of the revenue that a global juggernaut like McDonalds has?

I'm shocked he's only making the single digit millions.

 

[Net]

wow, under $2 million is actually really low pay for a ceo. Even at $7.8 million he's still way under the Chipotle's ceo making $28.9 million.

Here's the list: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/

 

[Red Squirrel]

I wonder which company will be the first to install an AI CEO.

Interestingly it would probably not be that hard to do. Have a PR person that handles all the PR related stuff CEOs do like talking with the media or addressing public/employees, and have the AI do the logical thinking. CEO is more of an authority figure than anything, he has the authority to make decisions. Anyone can come up with those decisions (good or bad), but the CEO is the one that is able to make them happen. So you could easily replace that with a computer and just say that the computer's decision is final.

Then the computer goes haywire and starts laying off everyone. That would make an interesting AI movie actually, where they replace a CEO with a computer, and at first things are working great and it's making the company generate tons of money, even gives out raises and somehow manages to do stuff that no one else could. Then something happens and it starts doing all sorts of crazy things. After purposely driving the company into the ground to fullfill some kind of agenda, it ends up running for president and winning.

 

[LevelSea]

CEO makes more than fry cook, alert the presses!

 

[Caesar]

And he runs a $25B company. It is not easy to do that and needs a special level of talent, commitment and effort to run a company that size. A salary of $8M/yr is actually not that high for a CEO of such a large company.

 

[Exophase]

According to this WSJ article from last year when he first became CEO his base salary was $1.1 million and represented a 69% raise over what he made in his previous position:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-old-ceo-to-get-3-million-for-consulting-1425419984

Then he got an 18% raise to $1.3m in 2016:

http://fortune.com/2016/02/19/mcdonalds-easterbrook-salary/

His predecessor had a base salary of $753,333 in 2012:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...donalds-former-new-ceo-big-pay-bumps/2078001/

Then was let go in 2015 with a $3m golden parachute for "consulting", because of company performance below expectations. And/or because he wanted to retire. Don't really know.

So, that leaves the tricky question of where all this other money comes from. There's more information here:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-pays-ceo-steve-easterbrook-7-9-million-in-2015-1460735727

$5m is from stock and options. You can hardly call it a raise when he makes money from the company's stocks increasing substantially in value.

But that doesn't solve the mystery of where this 368% number came from. In 2014 his total income was $7.3m, in 2015 it was $7.9m. So an 8% increase. And neither number could possibly be considered his "salary", nor could this $1.69 million number which I'm struggling to find the origin of. So.. yeah, I dunno, looks like this NYDailyNews article is just wrong all over the place.

 

[Net]

And he runs a $25B company. It is not easy to do that and needs a special level of talent, commitment and effort to run a company that size. A salary of $8M/yr is actually not that high for a CEO of such a large company.

Agreed. I know a good lawyer that makes over a million a year and his job/position is not near ceo level

 

[manly]

Yeah this whole capitalist thing makes me sick. There is zero redistribution of wealth. In fact he probably laid off people to get that bonus. Typical thing that seems to happen all too much now at all companies.

I would not be able to live with myself if I made that much money and had employees living on poverty. But I guess it takes a cold hearted person to be a CEO these days. You don't make decisions based on your heart, but based on money, and nothing but that.

Didn't you read the OP? Clearly there's redistribution, in favor of the new CEO!

Not to play Devil's advocate, but the CEO's job is to run the business and maximize profits. This does not IMO justify the chasm between CEO and line worker pay in U.S. corporations, but the CEO's job is not to share corporate profits with employees for moral reasons.

 

[IronWing]

I'm sure Mr. Easterbrook is grateful for all the support he gets here. He is probably also grateful that the peasants don't understand stock options and don't understand that with the millionaire welfare tax rate on capital gains, Mr. Easterbrook will pay a lower tax rate on his earnings than salaried schmucks pay on their's.

 

[chitwood]

the food still fucking sucks

 

[purbeast0]

good for him.

 

[dainthomas]

a 'whopping' $7.9 million?

That actually seems rather low for running such a large multinational

Meanwhile Kaepernick is going to be paid over $12 million to sit on the bench . . .

And he can wear his Beats to drown out the boos.

As far as McDonalds, that raise is the least he should get for all you can eat fries.

 

[Slew Foot]

That actually seems low for running a huge global company. A 3-4 starter in MLB makes more than that

 

[Net]

I'm sure Mr. Easterbrook is grateful for all the support he gets here. He is probably also grateful that the peasants don't understand stock options and don't understand that with the millionaire welfare tax rate on capital gains, Mr. Easterbrook will pay a lower tax rate on his earnings than salaried schmucks pay on their's.

actually, you want your ceo to have stock options so that he won't up and leave (restricted stock units, aka "golden handcuffs"), and so there is an incentive for him to grow the value of the company.

breakdown of his pay: http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-compensation.action?t=MCD

 

[dave_the_nerd]

And he runs a $25B company. It is not easy to do that and needs a special level of talent, commitment and effort to run a company that size. A salary of $8M/yr is actually not that high for a CEO of such a large company.

Even if I thought it was anywhere near hard enough to justify that kind of pay (I don't, because I've seen too many fuckup CEOs get big paydays), there are still way more qualified people than there are companies that need them.

Supply demand pressure would drive CEO wages down (or at least flat, like worker wages are) if the system weren't being rigged by the players.

 

[sdifox]

And he runs a $25B company. It is not easy to do that and needs a special level of talent, commitment and effort to run a company that size. A salary of $8M/yr is actually not that high for a CEO of such a large company.

So how much should POTUS make?

 

[sdifox]

McD CEO makes 900/hr round the clock for the whole year.

 

[IronWing]

all the employees have to do is wait for the wealth to trickle down.

Meanwhile the company is socializing the costs of those workers.

 

[brianmanahan]

a 'whopping' $7.9 million?

That actually seems rather low for running such a large multinational

Meanwhile Kaepernick is going to be paid over $12 million to sit on the bench . . .

agreed, 7.9$ mill is pretty low for a company of that size

shoot, sports players are making way more, and even some managers approach that level of compensation

 

[Exophase]

Even if I thought it was anywhere near hard enough to justify that kind of pay (I don't, because I've seen too many fuckup CEOs get big paydays), there are still way more qualified people than there are companies that need them.

Supply demand pressure would drive CEO wages down (or at least flat, like worker wages are) if the system weren't being rigged by the players.

Unless the CEO also has controlling interest in the company (in which case they get most of the profit anyway) why would the board want to pay so much more for so much worse results?

 

[Carson Dyle]

Meh.

If the guy was making 1/100th that, not a single McDonalds employee would make a penny more. Nor would it mean that a single human being who is not working for McDonalds would decide that the company is a good place to work.

 

[elitejp]

And he runs a $25B company. It is not easy to do that and needs a special level of talent, commitment and effort to run a company that size. A salary of $8M/yr is actually not that high for a CEO of such a large company.

What are you talking about? Any minimum wage worker could do his job. They're just being oppressed is all.

Glad to see this guy got a promotion to CEO, looks like he's doing a good job.