The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has long required public corporations to disclose the compensation of their top officers. The debate about whether chief executive officers are paid too much has gone on for decades. Many investors object to high CEO pay, which often runs into the tens of millions of dollars. Boards of directors claim that good CEOs are hard to find and that they have responsibilities for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of workers.
Last year, one American CEO made over $200 million, which is 2,963 more than the median compensation of his workers. According to the SEC, “The median employee’s annual total compensation was $71,259 in 2020” at the company he runs. He was also the only CEO to make over $100 million, according to an exclusive analysis of the pay of 294 public company CEOs done by MyLogIQ, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze public company data.
Chad Richison is the president and chief executive officer of Paycom, which he founded in 1998. Its primary business is payroll processing. Last year, Richison made an extraordinary $211,131,206. This included his base salary, stock awards, short-term incentives and other compensation. The latter category includes the use of corporate aircraft, personal security and car lease payments. Richison made $21,138,558 in 2019.
Paycom posted mediocre results in 2020. While revenue rose to $841 million from $738 million in 2019, earnings fell to $2.49 per share from $3.14. When the company reported earnings, Richison did not address this decline. “Our strong finish to 2020 further validates our differentiated employee usage strategy and the real-time ROI it provides businesses,” he said. It was not a strong finish at the bottom line.
Richison did deliver for shareholders in 2020. Paycom’s stock rose 66%, compared to 46% for the Nasdaq. Even if Paycom’s fourth-quarter earnings were not stellar, they did beat the Wall St. consensus estimates.
Special thanks to MyLogIQ.
Click here to see which CEO made 300 times more than his workers did last year.
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