tcook052

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/air-cana...emic-1.4954039

MONTREAL -- Air Canada CEO Calin Rovinescu was on track to receive around $12.9 million in total compensation last year, but the value fell by more than half as the airline's shares stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of May 4, when the company's share price closed at $17.63 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the total compensation of its president and chief executive officer was estimated at $5.8 million. Air Canada's shares closed at $16.76 on Monday.

imverge

$4.8 million too much when you consider all the employees who have lost their jobs.

EdmFlyBoi

And what would you suggest be appropriate compensation? He is giving up his base salary for 2020. I might suggest that his performance as CEO over the past 10 years justifies his compensation. Executive compensation has to be competitive. Suggesting the number is too high ignores market forces, past performance, and the basic realities of this type of compensation at present. I think the kind of knee jerk comments you are making are rather unrealistic.

tcook052

That's $5.8 million, not $4.8 million.

RangerNS

There is little boarding pass scanning and flight waitressing to be done. If anything, the executives are doing at least as much as they do when travel is peaking.

imverge

Ya, I guess their hands must hurt when you have to sign all those pink slips. Oh but wait, that's probably contracted off-shored to their India call centre.

imverge

LOL! Giving up your base salary is just PR. when you are in line to get $5.8 million in "compensation".

I hope the government will take some ownership in AC when they bail them out with a freeze on executives bonuses and share buy backs.

LondonElite

So much for redoing the cottage this year.

ChrisA330

This is 2019 compensation before any employee lost their job.

For anyone who actually cares how Executive Compensation at AC is determined you can find it here: https://www.aircanada.com/content/da...2020_proxy.pdf

RangerNS

There is an off-shored Indian call center? I only ever get people in Montreal.

Anyway. AC is in heavy negotiations with several outside agencies. Boeing and Airbus. Unions. Government. Banks, private equity. Dozens of airports, the Illuminati.

This crisis is very much outside the airlines control, and managing and leading the organization today would be more difficult then it was a year ago.

The line staff that don't have anything to do, well, they don't have anything to do. The executives are busy.

I'm not in a position to judge what the absolute number for his compensation should be, but half of what it was, for what would be more and harder work, seems not unreasonable.

meltedmarshmellow

No, he's giving up his salary until June 30th. It's all just for show.

yulred

Still seems overpaid for what amounts to a quasi-public sector job in everything but name. Absurd levels of regulatory capture - best exemplified by elected officials musings about refunds (Canadians - employed or unemployed - exist to prop up airlines, apparently), not to mention the APR farce playing out these days (what was even the point?) and all that.

And nah, the fact that he’s morphed from a glorified rent seeker to having to having to earn his keep these days doesn’t warrant much sympathy. Many of his public sector executive colleagues are working just as hard - if not harder - to keep things going. For a fraction of his salary (even when benefits and gold plated pensions are included).

I have a lot of sympathy for AC line workers and employees/executives in the private sector, but executives in the protected sectors (including airlines, banks and telecoms) aren’t, by definition, in the same league.

His rent seeking party is temporarily suspended? Meh.

RangerNS

He has setup artificial limits to generate wealth for doing nothing?

yulred

Has he set it up? Maybe. Maybe not. I think credit for that goes to the former AC COO who lived in ... errr... Ottawa?

Either way, he’s been operating in the least competitive market in the broader “west” (including Australia), that also has the dubious distinction of having some of the weakest regulations in the “west” (APR, flight duty rules). Witness this bizarre refund thing, where the elected Minister - and the CTA - came out defending the right of airlines to hold on to money from unemployed Canadians despite not providing the service (Regulatory capture is, after all, a tenet of rent seeking).

canadiancow

I'm not even sure I agree with the premise of this thread.

He was given X shares of stock under some terms based on a current value of Y.

At the end of 2016, Calin was given ~$3.5 million in stock. Looking at January of this year, that means his 2016 stock compensation was ~$14 million. Now it's ~$4 million. Tomorrow it will be something else.

Except that's not how you talk about past compensation. Future swings in share price definitely affect the value of shares/options/RSUs/etc., but it's ridiculous to retroactively say a prior year's total comp was different than it actually was, just because there were market movements.