At a time when families are struggling to pay their monthly bills, Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts has the honor of being named to the top five list of the most overpaid CEOs. As reported in a Telephony blog post, the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research and analysis firm, reported that Roberts' compensation last year was a whopping $40.8 million. This figure included a $2.7 million base salary and more than $22 million in stock options, as well as $8.3 million in bonuses.
Roberts total earnings come at a time when the cable company's stock has lagged the industry in recent years and was down nearly 7 percent in 2008.
Interestingly, none of the top telecom industry chiefs made the top five of Corporate Library's list. This comes in contrast to the Library's 2006 report where four out 11 CEOs on its list came from the telecom industry. It appears that there is a call for change in the air as both AT&T and Cisco joined a quorum of companies calling to develop compensation policies that close the gap between ‘pay and performance.'
For more:
- see this blog post on Telephony