Sprint Execs paid huge salary for running company into ground
Top managers at the telecom company were awarded pay valued at $74 million in 2007, even as the company saw massive customer defections to the competition and was preparing to toss out former CEO Gary Forsee in the process. Sounds like some recent AIG shenanigans, doesn't it? No wonder Main Street no longer trusts Wall Street. Although corporate compensation abuses are almost the norm recently, it's amazing shareholders don't stand up and scream when companies not doing well are lavishly rewarding management.
Of course, Sprint spokesperson James Fisher defended his employer by stating "It's very important to consider that 2007 was a highly unusual year because of compensation that was paid to an exiting CEO, as well as sign-on compensation paid to a new CEO … we had significant other severance charges for executive changes during the year." Severance charges — for a management team that ran the company into the ground. I guess all those contracts signed by incompetent management were too hard to bypass since shareholders can't blow holes in those golden parachutes.