I sincerely doubt that the thought even crossed any American based CEO's mind to do the same thing and when they saw/read this story, they shook their heads saying to themselves... NFW I'm doing that. And thinks Nishimatsu is a fool.
Oh yeah Right! Like An American CEO Would Do THIS!!
- Thread starter MA-Caver
- Start date
You might very well be surprised what American businessmen actually do. You only get the "greedy CEO" stories in the press but you have to look for what real businessmen actually do.
You do have to be careful to draw a distinction between businessmen, entrepreneurs who take their own risks and work hard to make an idea an economic reality and the executives who simply sit on the board of a company and play with other peoples money.
The latter will get paid even if they make a complete hash of everything and, because they have no incentive beyond a 'target' given them when they are hired, then they don't care how they achieve it. That often means that if they are set on to improve profits they will slash infrastructure and personnel, make their target and leave, declaring a success even if the company folds a year later because it has insufficient infrastructure or personnel.
I listen to a lot of business radio, shows where these people actually talk about the nuts and bolts of economics out in the world and even these people are saying that the renumeration packages are ridiculous and, more importantly, bear no relation to the value of the executive. They also, with refreshing frankness, say that no CEO can make much positive difference in a company, they can only wreck it through incompetence. The profit and efficiency comes from those who do the actual work and those lower management that guide them. All a CEO can do is ensure that the decisions they make whilst playing at being 'Boss' don't make the wheels come off.
The latter will get paid even if they make a complete hash of everything and, because they have no incentive beyond a 'target' given them when they are hired, then they don't care how they achieve it. That often means that if they are set on to improve profits they will slash infrastructure and personnel, make their target and leave, declaring a success even if the company folds a year later because it has insufficient infrastructure or personnel.
I listen to a lot of business radio, shows where these people actually talk about the nuts and bolts of economics out in the world and even these people are saying that the renumeration packages are ridiculous and, more importantly, bear no relation to the value of the executive. They also, with refreshing frankness, say that no CEO can make much positive difference in a company, they can only wreck it through incompetence. The profit and efficiency comes from those who do the actual work and those lower management that guide them. All a CEO can do is ensure that the decisions they make whilst playing at being 'Boss' don't make the wheels come off.
A nice story in the OP, and a nice change from the typical market avarice we read of daily. Thank you MA-C!
I think this is a pertinent point here.
It is easy kudos for a millionaire CEO to pass over an hundred-thousand bonus and make theirselves appear as a hero of the proletariat.
It is truer heroism I think for a businessperson to pay an employee out of their own pocket when they can scarcely afford to keep their business running. Corner store owner heroes are to be lauded. I I would agree with the tone of the OP and find this story unfortunately far from the norm. CEOs belong to a system which encourages them to be self-serving beyond ALL other concerns including that of employees.
Bill, do you not think that our familiar big-business "philanthropists" give in such ostentatious fashions with their charitable foundations only as a salve to their own consciences? Do believe they have a genuine concern when their major duty of care is to their shareholders?
I think this is a pertinent point here.
It is easy kudos for a millionaire CEO to pass over an hundred-thousand bonus and make theirselves appear as a hero of the proletariat.
It is truer heroism I think for a businessperson to pay an employee out of their own pocket when they can scarcely afford to keep their business running. Corner store owner heroes are to be lauded. I I would agree with the tone of the OP and find this story unfortunately far from the norm. CEOs belong to a system which encourages them to be self-serving beyond ALL other concerns including that of employees.
I think business people, including CEOs come in all different types. There are some who like giving to charities to help people, there are some who do it to increase their public profile, but in the end, they are all still people. Ronald McDonald has the Ronald McDonald house charity and probably numerous others. The thing is, you hear about greedy CEOs because they make for a good villian. I asked a question on a thread, how many corporations do not set up some sort of charity activity? Another question you could ask, how much money does an individual CEO give to charity out of his own pocket? How many go to church and give there? Also keep in mind, the business of a business is to make money. It isn't to employ people or to give people healthcare. Sukerkin has a good point that a lot of CEOs screw up companies, but that is no different than any other profession. That is also why they get paid a lot of money. If they make a company profitable, they reap the rewards. If they destroy a company and still make money than that is just part of the system. You take a chance when you hire a CEO and sometimes that falls flat.
How many sports stars or movie stars are hired, with unbelievably high salaries, some movie stars can make 20 million dollars for several weeks work, and then the sports team loses most of it's games or the movie is a flop? Do they give back the money they made when they are a failure?
How many 50 million dollar a year sports stars start charities to be good people, and how many start charities to improve their image? Micheal Vick anyone?
the evil CEO gets a lot of attention as well because they are the villian in huge numbers of the movies and television that people watch. There is a logical explanation for this, they don't have pressure groups going to hollywood to complain about their portrayel in movies and television. An article I read explained that businessmen are used so often now because studios don't have to worry about offending them. For example, The new Red Dawn movie had to re-image everything in their movie because they were told by the studio, after the film was made, they couldn't have the Chinese invading the United STates because they get a lot of money showing their movies in China. Now they are busy changing all the chinese images...to North Korean images. They are to busy starving to see movies.
I am going to look for stories about good CEOs and business types. ANother thing, the small businesses that are attacked quite a bit as well. In the U.S. small shop owners are shown to be greedy and unfreindly and paranoid all the time in in the media.
How many sports stars or movie stars are hired, with unbelievably high salaries, some movie stars can make 20 million dollars for several weeks work, and then the sports team loses most of it's games or the movie is a flop? Do they give back the money they made when they are a failure?
How many 50 million dollar a year sports stars start charities to be good people, and how many start charities to improve their image? Micheal Vick anyone?
the evil CEO gets a lot of attention as well because they are the villian in huge numbers of the movies and television that people watch. There is a logical explanation for this, they don't have pressure groups going to hollywood to complain about their portrayel in movies and television. An article I read explained that businessmen are used so often now because studios don't have to worry about offending them. For example, The new Red Dawn movie had to re-image everything in their movie because they were told by the studio, after the film was made, they couldn't have the Chinese invading the United STates because they get a lot of money showing their movies in China. Now they are busy changing all the chinese images...to North Korean images. They are to busy starving to see movies.
I am going to look for stories about good CEOs and business types. ANother thing, the small businesses that are attacked quite a bit as well. In the U.S. small shop owners are shown to be greedy and unfreindly and paranoid all the time in in the media.
you are - as usual - missing the point:
CEOs in general do not cut their own cash flow in the same way they cut it for the workers.
That has been the old story with the bunch: run the company in the ground, eliminate jobs and take multimillion parting gifts as you head for the next victim.
Run the economy - nationally and globally - in to the ground and accept bonuses from bailout money for your excellent work.
90k salary for any CEO....I think most of them would be hard pressed to make it through the first month on that, never mind a whole year! That is barely a middle class income!
Quit throwing charity in the mix. This is a prime example of what a good person should do, even if it hurts his own bottom line.
You know, integrity.....
CEOs in general do not cut their own cash flow in the same way they cut it for the workers.
That has been the old story with the bunch: run the company in the ground, eliminate jobs and take multimillion parting gifts as you head for the next victim.
Run the economy - nationally and globally - in to the ground and accept bonuses from bailout money for your excellent work.
90k salary for any CEO....I think most of them would be hard pressed to make it through the first month on that, never mind a whole year! That is barely a middle class income!
Quit throwing charity in the mix. This is a prime example of what a good person should do, even if it hurts his own bottom line.
You know, integrity.....
OP
- Thread Starter
- #7
Ok I understand that I was being unfair tossing a blanket over the entire group of CEO's here in this country, but a majority of them are making far above and beyond what they're actually worth. Nishimatsu in his own way saw the crisis going on in his own company and his own country and sat down and IMO was honest enough with himself about how much he was making vs the amount of work he was actually doing compared to his employees and their earnings to effort ratios... realized that his people were working harder than he was comparatively speaking. All he had to do was gather information and make correct decisions based on that information to keep the company in the black. Maybe that requires a lot of hard thinking but since JAL isn't suffering he saw that he could make cuts where they mattered and to me realized that loyalty of employees is far more important than the loyalty he'll keep to his own wallet. Thus cutting his own salary and humbling himself enough to eat with the rest of the grunts and making himself available to anyone who wanted to see him without making them go up the ladder.
If I wanted to have a direct heart to heart talk with the CEO of my company right now, I'll probably have to wait several months.
I know that Google, and several others treat their employees VERY well and have them in the most relaxed and comfortable work environs possible. As long as the people are doing the work then reward them accordingly. Hours of labor and sweat and getting a tiny check... well geez.
Nishimatsu is trying to set an example of what CAN be done if one is willing to do it.
His wife probably wasn't too happy about lowering their standards of living.
If I wanted to have a direct heart to heart talk with the CEO of my company right now, I'll probably have to wait several months.
I know that Google, and several others treat their employees VERY well and have them in the most relaxed and comfortable work environs possible. As long as the people are doing the work then reward them accordingly. Hours of labor and sweat and getting a tiny check... well geez.
Nishimatsu is trying to set an example of what CAN be done if one is willing to do it.
His wife probably wasn't too happy about lowering their standards of living.
That's a rather harsh thing to say. I doubt their standard of living was so high that such a cut in pay would make a difference, it's Japan after all which also means that if he has a wife she will totally understand and support him. His pay even after cuts is still substantially more than many get. $90,000 is not a low salary.
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Tez3 said:
$90,000 isn't much, but some CEO's make even less of a salary.
Like, a dollar. Really .
Like wikipedia says, these men often make much more in stock options-this was the case for Nishimatsu-who resigned in 2010, when JAL went into bankruptcy, one year after the article in the OP, BTW.....
Well, no, 90k is - for the average person - a sizable income.
I can't speak for Japan, but in the US it is a very low number though for upper management.
Even the head honcho of the American Red Cross, a not for profit organization pulled down in excess of 200k two decades ago! In the private sectors million dollar contracts are more the norm from what I have heard. multimillion dollar contracts, before bonuses...
I think that is what makes the number so noteworthy. Considering the cost of living in japan and the somewhat legendary purchases made by some individuals and companies (though probably largely in the 80s) leads me to believe that the missus had to swallow hard there for a second when the new budget was proposed to her.
What a lack of faith in women lol, how do we know it wasn't her idea? Or that she earns enough to support herself.
LOL, well, not saying she was not supportive. but I was going by the original story that she was like
Since it didn't say he got divorced, she must have gotten on board quickly.
Here is another one, Katie Couric. As anchor of the CBS news she not only is the face of that news organization, you can bet she has substantial control over the editorial content of the news. She made 15 million dollars a year in salary and drove the ratings of the news hour into the tank. Her bias is obvious to conservative americans, so that also helped to tank her ratings. Her job after all is to gain as much audience as possible, not offend just about half of her audience base because she doesn't like them. According to the article below, her salary was as much as two NPR shows entire budgets, combined...
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/ente...-more-yearly-budget-nprs-biggest-shows/37921/
How many low level reporters lost their jobs to pay her salary? Did she care? Did she say, "take bake 14 million dollars of my salary that I recieve for reading the news, and make sure the cameramen, reporters, secretaries and janitors all get a pay bump?
I understand the point of the op, but I am always curious why CEOs are specifically targeted because of their pay. They do a job, they get paid what their employer believes he needs to pay to get that person to work for them. Sometimes it works out really well, sometimes it is a catastrophe.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/ente...-more-yearly-budget-nprs-biggest-shows/37921/
Should she have given back her salary? She could very easily have worked for 90,000 dollars a year and you know that she was the primary problem with the ratings, I mean the other two networks consistently beat her, so it wasn't as if you could say the changes in the news industry explained her place behind the other two networks.
How many low level reporters lost their jobs to pay her salary? Did she care? Did she say, "take bake 14 million dollars of my salary that I recieve for reading the news, and make sure the cameramen, reporters, secretaries and janitors all get a pay bump?
I understand the point of the op, but I am always curious why CEOs are specifically targeted because of their pay. They do a job, they get paid what their employer believes he needs to pay to get that person to work for them. Sometimes it works out really well, sometimes it is a catastrophe.
LOL, well, not saying she was not supportive. but I was going by the original story that she was like
Since it didn't say he got divorced, she must have gotten on board quickly.
All she said was 'what', if they've been married a long time she probably didn't hear what he said, gets like that after 30 years or so trust me. They are Japanese, he's a company man and she's a company wife so there is hardly likely to have been a problem.
http://www.venturejapan.com/japan-business-culture-company.htm
How much money should a CEO make? Who decides? How much is 'too much'? What is 'OK' and what is 'greedy'?
Tell me that before bitching and moaning about greedy CEOs.
Tell me that before bitching and moaning about greedy CEOs.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #18
To me a CEO shouldn't live in a sprawling 2.5 million dollar house while their employees live in 30 year old apartment buildings barely scraping by on their own hourly wages to make rent, car-payments or monthly bus-passes and food, utilities and maybe a movie twice a month if they're lucky.
I've been bottom man on the totem pole for a lot of companies and seen how the top dawg of the company lives and wonder and always wonder if he knows how this and other workers for him are living? Or if they even care? As long as we do our jobs, get to work on time, follow the anal-retentive rules of clocking in and clocking out and the times of our lunch breaks or mid work breaks be precisely or under the 30/15 minute limit. Never mind that for us "filthy smokers" having to walk 5 minutes across the factory floor to the exit where there's only one spot on the entire complex that allows smoking and having just 5 minutes to suck down our nasty weeds and then have 4 minutes to get back to our spots on the factory floor...
Do they know? Do they care?
Doesn't matter any much anyway. Company I work for now does inventory for a host of various stores. As I flip the merchandise over all I've seen are tags with Made in anywhere else in the world except USA. A 10 year old child in Taiwan has a better chance of finding a job than I do. That kid will earn in a month what I could earn in a day or two. The CEO after shipping all of it back to U.S. shores and paying the import fees and transport/distribution centers to get that product to the stores... just sits back and reaps the profits.
I've been bottom man on the totem pole for a lot of companies and seen how the top dawg of the company lives and wonder and always wonder if he knows how this and other workers for him are living? Or if they even care? As long as we do our jobs, get to work on time, follow the anal-retentive rules of clocking in and clocking out and the times of our lunch breaks or mid work breaks be precisely or under the 30/15 minute limit. Never mind that for us "filthy smokers" having to walk 5 minutes across the factory floor to the exit where there's only one spot on the entire complex that allows smoking and having just 5 minutes to suck down our nasty weeds and then have 4 minutes to get back to our spots on the factory floor...
Do they know? Do they care?
Doesn't matter any much anyway. Company I work for now does inventory for a host of various stores. As I flip the merchandise over all I've seen are tags with Made in anywhere else in the world except USA. A 10 year old child in Taiwan has a better chance of finding a job than I do. That kid will earn in a month what I could earn in a day or two. The CEO after shipping all of it back to U.S. shores and paying the import fees and transport/distribution centers to get that product to the stores... just sits back and reaps the profits.
The accepted ratio was about 20 to 30 times what one of his employees made. Now it is 300 times + that and even those who hold the positions, the ones that still have souls, recognise the dangers in that, utterly leaving aside the iniquities of it.
How did we get there? By panels of those who hold those posts voting each other pay rises and guaranteed bonuses (hang on, isn't that salary then?) and share-holders not knowing enough or caring enough to say "That's far enough!". In martial arts circles it'd be McDojo rank inflation.
Again, you have to distinguish between businessmen/entrepreneurs and corporate leaches who perform no function except to be the Nominated Person in Charge (not to be confused with accepting responsibility). They can only mess things up, they can never make them better (other than by rolling several double-sixes in a row aka being lucky rather than good). They are not worth their hire and they take no consequences from what they do - even Mafia Dons take more personal responsibility.
It's about time share-holders woke up to their responsibilities and started saying "No!" to these guys. And it's not just little guys like me saying so; as I stated earlier, I listen to a lot of economics related material (it's almost like I'm actually qualified to talk about it). Members of the fraternity that do know what they're doing and understand that 'success' does not mean fire-everyone-to-make-a-one-year-profit-and-then-go-bankrupt are starting to state publicly that the re-numeration packages are a joke voted for by the very pigs who are rooting in the trough.
How did we get there? By panels of those who hold those posts voting each other pay rises and guaranteed bonuses (hang on, isn't that salary then?) and share-holders not knowing enough or caring enough to say "That's far enough!". In martial arts circles it'd be McDojo rank inflation.
Again, you have to distinguish between businessmen/entrepreneurs and corporate leaches who perform no function except to be the Nominated Person in Charge (not to be confused with accepting responsibility). They can only mess things up, they can never make them better (other than by rolling several double-sixes in a row aka being lucky rather than good). They are not worth their hire and they take no consequences from what they do - even Mafia Dons take more personal responsibility.
It's about time share-holders woke up to their responsibilities and started saying "No!" to these guys. And it's not just little guys like me saying so; as I stated earlier, I listen to a lot of economics related material (it's almost like I'm actually qualified to talk about it
). Members of the fraternity that do know what they're doing and understand that 'success' does not mean fire-everyone-to-make-a-one-year-profit-and-then-go-bankrupt are starting to state publicly that the re-numeration packages are a joke voted for by the very pigs who are rooting in the trough.Well, yah ain't getting it.
See, if the CEO does his job and the company thrives, not a single soul usually bothers to look at the compensation he/she receives.
However, it has been a long time since then. We have been plagued with droves of people in the upper echelons who have ruined steady companies, effectively robbed the workers of their retirement funds while lining their pockets with company money and then accepting huge severance packages when they left. And that was even before the infamous bailout bonuses.
I am thinking as far back as K-mart and Enron. Many more where on the chopping block.
It still seems to be rare that the 'leadership' takes responsibility rather than letting the rats drown with the sinking ship while waving from shore.
