When meat orders from restaurants, hotels and other food-service clients dried up at two of Hormel Foods Corp.’s plants in April, finance chief Jim Sheehan chose to furlough roughly 350 workers, but didn’t lay them off. These furloughed employees didn’t receive pay but got benefits such as health care. It was a careful calculus. After years of effort…
Hundreds of U.S. companies reduced salaries for their chief executives as the coronavirus pandemic swept across American business, a reversal for a group of leaders that until this year has ridden a bull market to record compensation. Big-company CEOs had their richest paydays ever in 2019, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. But in March…
Cheesecake Factory Inc. furloughed about 41,000 hourly restaurant workers to conserve cash in the coronavirus pandemic. It also cut pay for other employees by as much 20%—a reduction that Chief Executive David Overton matched for his $995,000 salary. At Yum Brands Inc., Chief Executive David Gibbs is forgoing his $1.2 million salary for the rest of this year, using the…
With the first quarter in the books, big companies are preparing to disclose to investors early indications of the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic. The respiratory illness has shut down many parts of the U.S. economy, spurring a wave of layoffs and furloughs that resulted in a record 17 million unemployment claims in a…
Chief executives of large U.S. companies rode a more than decadelong bull market to a string of record pay days. Now, the stock market’s coronavirus-fueled swoon could wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars from executive pay packages and prompt a recalibration of how CEO compensation is set. The potential losses highlight the flip side…
Bank of America Corp. greenlighted a $26.5 million pay package for its top executive in 2019 after the bank’s shares marked their best run in years. Brian Moynihan is set to receive compensation that matches the preceding year’s package. His pay includes a $1.5 million base salary and $25 million worth of restricted stock, the bank said…
The merger of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. will be lucrative for the top executives of both companies. Viacom Chief Executive Bob Bakish, who will become president and CEO of the combined company, ViacomCBS, has signed a new contract ending four years after the deal closes. The contract lists salary, bonuses and other incentives worth about $31 million…
Wall Street companies delivered significant losses to their shareholders last year, but the pain didn’t spread to the top. The chiefs of banking and financial institutions in the S&P 500 received a median raise of 8.5% last year, compared with 5.6% for CEOs in the broader index, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Meanwhile, firms…
Media titans came under heavy scrutiny in 2018 for their business practices and deal making, but they were well-compensated for their trouble. The S&P 500’s communication-services sector, a group that includes Facebook Inc., Walt Disney Co. and AT&T Inc., posted a median CEO pay of $22.6 million in 2018, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, higher than any other sector and more…
PayPal Holdings Inc.’s PYPL -1.79% Daniel Schulman collected a pay package totaling $37.8 million in 2018, making him one of the highest-paid bosses in the S&P 500. But for Mr. Schulman and many of his fellow CEOs in the software industry, big paydays were backed by healthy returns. Most companies selling software and related services thrived last year, with…