Originally Posted by vasantn
I'm a huge critic of exorbitant executive pay in American corporations, but this is almost pitiful.
You won't hear me complaining. This is way, way below market to run a company like AMR. I know a bunch of CEOs who make this kind of money running companies that are nowhere near the size of AA.
From the base - I agree - it is very low -however the true compensation is the total of all the options and other perks so my guess is it is four or five times higher than the base - still not huge by Fortune 500 CEO pay standards.
I'm however waiting for the day CEO incentive targets are the same as for line employees. In other words, if the CEO gets 50x shares when the stock price hits a given target, give the employees 1x shares at the same target.
AA is certainly not out of the woods yet -- I think that is why they are continuing to talk to employees about productivity increases. I'm not sure if I were Mr. Arpey and I wanted to be at AA in 10 years, I would take this now, but ask the board to defer it for another 24 months.