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Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

wsj.com

31–40 of 160 posts

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert, but wouldn't this almost all be taxed at capital gains rates? And those aren't changing. Even if they are taxed as income, the top rate is (probably) changing from 39.6% to 38.5%, so he'd saving less than 1% on $499 million of this. So where is he getting a big tax cut?

edited: I was saying AMT means higher rate, but I was wrong.

The top long term capital gains rate is the same in both the AMT and the "regular" tax: 20%

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#32
post #22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Aetna employees almost 50,000 people. Aetna owes some success to their CEO. They owe most of their success to their employees.

Right, because those 50,000 employees were making the major directional decisions for the company, not the C level execs

No rationalization about value can ever hide the obvious and deep-rooted lord / serf dynamic.

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#33
post #22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Aetna employees almost 50,000 people. Aetna owes some success to their CEO. They owe most of their success to their employees.

Right, because those 50,000 employees were making the major directional decisions for the company, not the C level execs

The only reason those people are able to contemplate such decisions is because of the thousands of workers supporting the enterprise.

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#34
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Aetna employees almost 50,000 people. Aetna owes some success to their CEO. They owe most of their success to their employees.

Say I start building a house. I realize I can't do it all by myself, so I get other people to do all the labor involved in building it. All the while providing all the details, instructions, and architectural guidelines to get a good finished product. Not to mention sourcing the materials required, getting the plans approved by the city, and making sure that on-sight construction passes inspection by the city. Who "o…

That's not really a good analogy for a CEO's job, though.

A CEO's job would be someone who makes a small number of very broad, directional choices (should the home be Victorian, or Brutalist?) then hires and manages a team of people to hire and manage teams of people to hire and manage teams of people to build a house.

Given that the only decision they made was "Victorian vs Brutalist" and then hiring some decent managers, should they still receive that much compensation just for (in this case!) happening to have made the right choice?

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#35
post #15

Oligarchy at its best: Aetna/CVS workers mostly making minimum wage and doing all the work while the CEOs earning insane paychecks. Would this guy really be worse off if he only made 50M and the other 450M would go to the employees?

would you accept $50 bonus and $1 to each of your 450 covorkers if you were set to receive $500 bonus instead?

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#36
post #13

Well, he led the company while its value went from $10 billion to $69 billion in 7 years. Doesn't seem ridiculous.

Yes it does. Aetna employees almost 50,000 people. Aetna owes some success to their CEO. They owe most of their success to their employees.

I'm all for taxing the rich and compensating workers fairly.

But:

- Had the company declined, the CEO would have gotten all the blame and been crucified. Can't give blame if you can't also give credit.

- The CEO negotiated this deal, the employees did not.

- A good portion of this $500M is from the value of his stock, which is part of his compensation. I don't know the percentage of this payout that comes from stock (WSJ paywall...), but we certainly can't take stock AWAY from him to reduce his payout.

- Employees who have cashed in their options will also make money from this deal. Other stockholders will make money too.

Again -- I am NOT condoning our American trend of over-paid CEOs. More money in the working class is good for the economy. But this event specifically is not ridiculous.

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#37
post #15

Oligarchy at its best: Aetna/CVS workers mostly making minimum wage and doing all the work while the CEOs earning insane paychecks. Would this guy really be worse off if he only made 50M and the other 450M would go to the employees?

I'd love to know what the average raise % for rank and file employees was over that time period of success.

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#38
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Aetna employees almost 50,000 people. Aetna owes some success to their CEO. They owe most of their success to their employees.

Say I start building a house. I realize I can't do it all by myself, so I get other people to do all the labor involved in building it. All the while providing all the details, instructions, and architectural guidelines to get a good finished product. Not to mention sourcing the materials required, getting the plans approved by the city, and making sure that on-sight construction passes inspection by the city. Who "o…

Aetna's CEO is an employee of Aetna. So in your tale he's part of the labor, not the person who wants a house built.

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#39
post #15

Oligarchy at its best: Aetna/CVS workers mostly making minimum wage and doing all the work while the CEOs earning insane paychecks. Would this guy really be worse off if he only made 50M and the other 450M would go to the employees?

$450m would work out to $900 per employee (assuming 50k employees), not bad for a bonus. edit: As commenters below pointed out correct number is $9,000 per employee, which would have made for a pretty awesome Christmas bonus. If we also include CVS employees (240k) the bonus drops to $1,552 which is still pretty good.

CVS alone had over 240k employee in 2016. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CVS_Pharmacy

Re: Aetna CEO Set to Reap About $500M If CVS Deal Closes

#40
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Aetna employees almost 50,000 people. Aetna owes some success to their CEO. They owe most of their success to their employees.

Say I start building a house. I realize I can't do it all by myself, so I get other people to do all the labor involved in building it. All the while providing all the details, instructions, and architectural guidelines to get a good finished product. Not to mention sourcing the materials required, getting the plans approved by the city, and making sure that on-sight construction passes inspection by the city. Who "o…

To add to that: Would the house ever be built at all if not for the person employing the labor to build it?

Great analogy for a company too. Whether it's a start up or growing a large company to be even larger. There is no automatic force that just makes a company grow, innovate, grab market share. Things don't just happen without the leadership and direction from the top.

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