Comments on: Exxon’s CEO didn’t really get a $398 million retirement package

By: M.L. Gilbertson

M.L. Gilbertson — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:26:11 +0000

I noticed the article said little was known about Lee Raymonds youth. Well, I grew up about a block
away from his house in Watertown , S. D. I was his
older brothers best friend and my folks were very
close friends and Lees’ father was an engineer on
the M& St. L. railroad while my dad was agent. I was with my father the morning Lee was born, his father called my dad and told him Lee was
born to , Irma, that morning and that
Lee had been born with a bad cleft lip like his
father had. His dad was distraught and my father
comforted him and later helped get medical aid to
repair the lip. I was 10 years old at the time
and Lees’ brother George was about 6 years older than Lee. We moved into the neighborhood about
1930 and spent many winter days at their house where the folks played pinochel. Lee displayed a
brilliant mind all through his youth and was an
outstanding student at Watertown High and was a
leader on the debate team. I haven’t talked with
Lee since he was President in New York many years
before Dallas. It is truly a Horatio Alger story
and Lee deserves every penny he was paid. Don’t
forget Uncle Sam probably took half of it. We spent many summers picknicking on Lake Kampeska
and hunting pheasants with his dad in the fall.
Lee was close to his dad and his dad told me that
Lee would lead Exxon someday and he was right.

By: Sig Lanoux

Sig Lanoux — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:50:38 +0000

I know this comment is a little late but I just saw the article and comments above. I would like to make a statement and ask a question. The Economic Policy Institute published a memorandum (#120) in 2007 which reported on congress action which allowed hedge fund managers to count a lot of their income as investment income so it could reduce their tax rate to 15% on this income.

Sometimes actions like this flow into other categories. Is it possible that he could have received special treatment so that his taxes were also reduced?

Just curious.

By: Lovely A

Lovely A — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:58:35 +0000

How can anyone try and defend a $398 million dollar retirement package???? When the working poor are paying $2-3.50 for a gallon of gas. We paid his retirement package. As someone else said divide the money between all exxon workers for their retirement package.

By: David Kyriacou

David Kyriacou — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:32:05 +0000

Exxon will have its day but it won’t be in some
kangaroo court.
It may take decades but as they always say “what comes around goes around.”
They have been ruining our earth for a long time
but the earth will have its say.
Amen.

By: Mike Allen

Mike Allen — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:23:08 +0000

Oh Christ, Bill, your arguement is PURELY SEMANTICS. because Lee Raymond is “retiring” he will cash in those OPTIONS and STOCKS from previous years.

BTW, I noticed you never mentioned that Lee Raymond led the fight against Alaskans on their punative judgement against Exxon for the Valdez disaster that destroyed lives and careers.

Exxon STILL has not paid, after almost 2 decades! Exxon has even manufactured evidence that “juries cannot decide punative decisions” by paying psyhcitrists to publish such papers on medical journals, and then presenting the journals in court.

Lee Raymond should be going to jail for entering fraudulent evidence in court.

Go to the wall for something else.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:10:19 +0000

My appologies, $396,000,000

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:03:20 +0000

What the hell is one guy going to do with $400,000,000??? The real question to ask is: How many people got screwed over so one man could earn that much money. This man could have a GREAT retirement with $4,000,000, which is WAY more than what most other people are making. The other $36,000,000 along with, say 8 billion in PROFITS could be distributed to the rest of Exxon employees pension plans. No one needs that much money.

By: Daniel H

Daniel H — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 22:29:02 +0000

All of your statiscal inferences are irrelevent to the central issue, which is that the CEOs of oil companies ARE being inordinant salaries while raising gas prices to extreme highs. No number-play can deny that, you are all clearly using fallacies which aren’t fooling anyone.

And the fact is, 2005 was Lee’s final year and final year salary is included in his retirement package as this is part of his pension. Idiots.

By: Dale M

Dale M — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:49:33 +0000

Oh, one last thing (really):

A more legitimate complaint about CEO pay to my mind is that far too often, CEO pay is like money made by a heavyweight prizefighter, where even a losing fighter can earn $10 mil. I certainly don’t know the Oil&Gas business, but unless there are good reasons for their lower % profits, the CEOs and execs of Valero Energy and Sunoco should probably be fired, with very little golden parachute. The fact that even terrible CEOs get away with multi-million dollar severances does seem to be a serious problem with corporate boards and their oversight (although even terrible CEOs still have their pay used as an incentive for the many underling execs that aspire to have a ‘C’ at the beginning of their job title.

By: Dale M

Dale M — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:42:04 +0000

Also, while this is somewhat off-track to the Exxon CEO pay, it is interesting to note that Exxon only has ‘record profits’ in an absolute sense, with record absolute total dollar of profits since Exxon is the largest revenue-producing company in the world. But Exxon only ranks 23 in percentage profitability, at 10.6%, in the recent Fortune 100 published in April 06. This is not particularly surprising, since Oil&Gas is an industry with fairly high cost of infrastructue, even in an era of high oil prices. Also not surprising is that Microsoft is the clear winner in percentage of profits in the Fortune 100, at a stunning 30.8%, since they have little infrastructure costs, only really pay for employees’ salaries, and have very high average margins for their products. Next in percentage of profitability are also unsurprising: Cisco (a very distant second at 23.1%), Intel (22.3%), Coca-Cola (21.1%), Merck (21.0%), Johnson & Johnson (20.6%), Bank of America (19.6%), Wells Fargo (19.0%), Citigroup (18.8%), Wachovia Group (18.5%), then Pfizer, Abbott Labs, Altria Group, Goldman Sachs, P&G, PepsiCo, Motorola, Amex, Prudential, AT&T, Merril Lynch THEN Exxon. So clearly, Congress should pass a windfall profits tax on high-tech, banks and brokers, pharmaceutical and consumer products companies before Exxon and Oil&Gas companies.

It is also very interesting to note that among the Fortune 100 Petroleum companies, Exxon clearly beats all of them in profitability, a striking measure of productivity and efficiency despite XOM’s size. Here are the Fortune 100 Petro companies, ranked by percentage of profitability:

…………..F100-Rank..%Profit..F100-%ProfitRank
Exxon……………….1………10.6%….23
ConocoPhillips..6………..8.1%….37
Chevron…………..4………..7.4%….41
Amerada Hess.88……….5.3%….59
Marathon Oil….23……….5.1%….62
Valero Energy..15……….4.4%….71
Sunoco……………66……….3.1%….82
.

Clearly, size does seem to help profitability in Oil&Gas. And maybe Raymond is worth some money, since his company has between 23.5% and 242% greater % of profit than his direct Fortune 100 competitors. (I might do this analysis for the rest of the Fortune 1000, just for yuks.)

By: Dale M

Dale M — Wed, 17 May 2006 12:44:15 +0000

Thanks for this great breakdown. As one who seeks the truth and gets completely sick of the easy 2-sentence stupid and simplistic attack, as well as the too-common lazy journalism, I am glad to be able to cite these stats. How many of the news reports or other articles that have cited the $400 mil number know the breakdown, much less those many others who have blinded cited the number?

One question: are the numbers for the value of the unexercised options in 2005 (the $69.6 mil) present value or just the 2005 total value? I assume the ‘value’ of the options is net the current Exxon stock price. And, of course, if the value of Exxon stock declines, or is even just flat in the future, the total value of this compensation would decline significantly.

Another fairly significant point, I believe, is that Raymond presided over Exxon during a period where XOM grew from a split-adjusted $5 (when he was first president of Exxon) or $10 when he became CEO, to its current roughly $60. So of course, if your company’s stock has increased 6- or 12- fold during a time that you have received big stock option grants, your stock grants will have great value. Plus, through aggressive leadership and wise mergers, Raymond guided Exxon to be the largest corporation in the world (revenue-wise) (although NOT by any stretch the most profitable Fortune 500 company by %), increasing XOM’s market cap by billions of dollars for XOM’s investors.

Lastly, isn’t it correct that a $98.4 mil lump-sum pension payout for a CEO with a roughly $10 mil (salary + bonus) is roughly equivalent to a $1 mil payout for an employee who earns $100k? That’s still a nice, generous, old-style pension that is disappearing for most workers in today’s increasing 401k world, but that makes the $98.4 mil look more reasonable.

It does seem like a fool’s errand to try to defend such extremely high CEO pay, but I also know that paying a CEO high amounts for the very difficult job that most CEOs do also has a very powerful ripple-down effect where many, many other executives and other officials in the company also work very, very hard in hopes of reaching those heights of power and compensation. That is a value of high CEO pay to the company as a whole that is pretty hard to absolutely determine.

By: A Stitch in Haste

A Stitch in Haste — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:33:21 +0000

Exxon — Exxoff…

Take a moment to learn about Exxon.

Then ask yourself whether you could serve as Chairman and CEO of that company, even if you had 43 years to le……

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 05:25:24 +0000

I do disagree about capture of the FTC. Strongly. Do you have some reason to believe they have been captured? The view that PGR’s not only are inefficient but are likely to harm consumers comes from both inside and outside the agency and from a variety of folks. Capture does not seem like a useful or helpful description of the FTC’s analysis. For that matter, I don’t care much about the motives as much as the accuracy of the analysis. Do you have any reason to believe that their analysis is flawed on the merits?

I understand that your response to the FTC’s position that PGR’s decrease social wealth is that this leaves open the distribution question. But I have to admit I do not understand the moral superiority of the PGR or windfall profit tax. What alternatives are you comparing? What effects follow from increasing (they are already taxed) the profits of oil refiners? How do these consequences play in your morality analysis?

The FTC’s analysis says some interesting things about “consumer interests” and not just social wealth. I thought that this point was responsive to your morality claim. I still do. Consumer harm must be incorporated into your morality analysis, no? Maybe I just don’t get the moral hook here. In what sense is forcing consumers to wait longer to alleviate the shortage morally superior? Isn’t rent control justified by your argument as well?

By: Geoffrey Manne

Geoffrey Manne — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 04:57:36 +0000

In essence, though, this would seem to present a fairly problematic point for your argument. I guess we can argue about the morality of theoretical laws in a Utopian, abstract sense, but it seems like a pretty silly exercise. The real problem with your claims is that they are impractical and, in the real world, dangerous. Who will set the tax? Who will administer it? Who will ensure that it falls on the intended parties? Who has enough information to determine how much profit is enough? Why do you believe that the market is less likely to reach the “right” result, net of enforcement and error costs, than the government? Is there collusion? Information asymmetry?

Shorter: The FTC is subject to limited information, stasis, bureaucracy and capture (and by different constituencies). Why do you believe they will get it right?

By: Dave Hoffman

Dave Hoffman — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 03:53:12 +0000

Yup, we must have crossed wires, and I think we’re still sort of arguing past each other.

I agree with you that the FTC’s position on PGRs in the oil context is important. I do think the agency is subject to capture, especially in year five of an administration. Do you disagree?

Holding capture constant, isn’t the FTC saying that disabling PGRs will remove inefficiencies and increase net social wealth? My response to that argument, which I’ve made a few times in different contexts, is that this is a straightforward Kaldor-Hicks measure of the normative attractiveness of a policy choice. And, therefore, taxing the winners after the choice has been made may in some instances be required to make sure the policy is morally fair. Shorter: no PGRs in this context; yes taxing oil producers.