Taxpayers Pad Military Contractor CEO Pockets

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/03-1


Marillyn Hewson, who became Lockheed’s chief executive officer earlier this year, is among those in the weapons industry upper-class who've gotten rich off taxpayer funded failures time and again. (Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

Would you believe me if I told you that your tax dollars are lining the pockets of some of the highest-paid CEOs?

The Institute for Policy Studies recently released a report examining the performance of the corporate chief executives who have ranked among America’s 25 highest-paid CEOs in one or more of the past 20 years. CEOs from leading government contractors comprise more than 12 percent of the top-paid chief executives in the Institute’s report. In the same years that these CEOs received some of corporate America’s fattest paychecks, their firms snagged $255 billion in taxpayer-funded federal contracts.

Five of the companies with the highest-paid CEOs made the top 100 U.S. government contractors list every year over the past 20 years. These firms include two big military contractors — Lockheed Martin and United Technologies — along with IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell. These five companies have received $671 billion in federal contracts over the past 20 years.

More taxpayer dollars have flowed into the coffers of aerospace giant Lockheed Martin than any other U.S. corporation over the past 20 years. In 2012, U.S. government contracts accounted for 82 percent of Lockheed’s net sales.

[xchrom]

1. kick

[Cerridwen]

2. "Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted"

Link to the original article about the report: http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive-excess-2013

A snippet with my emphasis added:

This 20th anniversary Executive Excess report examines the "performance" of the 241 corporate chief executives who have ranked among America’s 25 highest-paid CEOs in one or more of the past 20 years.

The lavishly compensated CEOs we spotlight here should be exemplars of value-added performance. After all, sky-high CEO pay purportedly reflects the superior value that elite chief executives add to their enterprises and the broader U.S. economy.

But our analysis reveals widespread poor performance within America’s elite CEO circles. Chief executives performing poorly — and blatantly so — have consistently populated the ranks of our nation’s top-paid CEOs over the last two decades.

The report’s key finding: nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on these highest-paid lists were eventually "bailed out, booted, or busted."

Link to the .pdf of their analysis: http://www.ips-dc.org/files/6377/EE13-FINAL.pdf

At the link to the original is also a downloadable file of compensation data and a link to previous years reports.

[Mnemosyne]

3. K&R nt