The paycheques of CEOs
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
No matter what the exact relationship between Samoa Packing and Prudential Insurance, one thing is clear: Pru’s chief execu tive officer has a more modest remuneration package than Tony O’Reilly, CEO of Heinz which owns American Samoa’s Starkist operation.
A couple of years ago O’Reilly had a particularly good year, drawing $75,084,622 in various forms of compensation (salary, bonuses, fringes and stock options).To provide a frame of refer ence, it was more than twice the entire gross national product of Kiribati in a recent year.
In contrast, in the last year for which we have data, 1993, Prudential’s since-retired CEO, Robert Cushing Winters, pulled down only $2,290,000 in salary and bonuses.
Winters thus earned considerably less that year than the pay roll of the Samoa Packing plant (which we estimate at about $12,000,000).The figure assumes a $3.00 average hourly wage, a 2000-hour work year and employment of 2000 people.
O’Reilly, on the other hand, in his $75,000,000 year, earned five times as much as the 2400 workers at StarKist, whose earnings we estimate in the $14,000,000 - $15,000,000 range.