Soaring gas prices are squeezing most Americans at the pump, but at least one man isn't complaining.

Last year, Exxon made the biggest profit of any company ever, $36 billion, and its retiring chairman appears to be reaping the benefits.

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million...

...and his $51.1 million paycheck in 2005. That's equivalent to $141,000 a day, nearly $6,000 an hour.

Full story...

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1841989

Wow. :rolleyes:

I need to work for an oil company.

That's obscene.

I wish I could go back in time and use my college fund to buy Exxon stock in 1999 instead of going to college.

I wish I could go back in time and use my college fund to buy Exxon stock in 1999 instead of going to college.

you would have made some money, not enough to retire by a long shot and much less than you could have made with foresight (discounting boutique investments REITs and latin american funds have done MUCH better)

buying exxon mobile around when major combat operations began in Iraq would have been much better than buying it in 1999 (it has risen about 25% since year end 1999, not stellar performance by a long shot)

It does seem excessive. But, I don't know what a regular salary or benefits are for an oil company executive, especially one that did so well for the company. But, even besides that, I was thinking - if we paid this guy absolutely nothing, how much would our gas prices go down?

So, he was paid $400 million in a bonus, and $51 million last year. So, let's say we're pissed off, and want to give him no bonus, and pay him $30,000 for his work last year.

I'll make some quick assumptions.

The average price for gasoline used in cars was $2.60 last year.
http://www.conocophillips.com/newsroom/other_resources/energyanswers/oil_profits.htm
Exxon produced approximately 45 billion gallons of gasoline for use in cars last year.
http://www.nacsonline.com/NR/rdonlyres/e5svzfoi2ool4xbggnjfuoy63xzoe4jz7vm6z2mmeyn4ayidc6 rgptnzhiiizljmnz3jwputk4cj2xyv3ydh73oyypg/US+Petroleum+Industry--Statistics-Definitions.pdf
This means that we spent about $117 billion on gasoline for cars. If we subtract his $451 million, and give it all back to gas purchasers, that means we would have only spent $116.549 billion on gas. If we factor this in to the average price per gallon, the price would drop to $2.59.

Hmm. So, we pay this guy absolutely nothing, and gas prices drop by only one penny? Even if my statistics are off, which I'm positive they are, is it really wrong to pay somebody hundreds of millions of dollars if he's successfully running a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars?

It does seem excessive. But, I don't know what a regular salary or benefits are for an oil company executive, especially one that did so well for the company.

According to the article his salary was 5x what the CEO of Chevron received.

According to the article his salary was 5x what the CEO of Chevron received.

Ouch. Maybe it is a little much. I wonder what he's going to do with $451 million. He'll probably buy one of those new electric cars.

maybe the people who own the company should elect a group of individuals, lets call them a board of directors, who can make decisions about hiring/firing/compensating the CEO.

Since word of this has got out they have had some backlash form a lot of their large stock holders. That is $400 million that is taken directly off of the Exxon profit and stock holders dont like seeing money like that being spent.

maybe the people who own the company should elect a group of individuals, lets call them a board of directors, who can make decisions about hiring/firing/compensating the CEO.

Um. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not... but anyway, here is the CEO's response:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/19/news/newsmakers/exxon_raymond.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

When people that high up the ladder are hired, I think they negotiate some type of contract as a part of the acceptance process. Maybe this was in the contract when he was hired? I know a guy who is an executive placement manager. That's what he does..negotiates executive employee's contracts. That's still more than a boatload of money.

I think his salary and bonus was entirely determined by the board of directors. He claims it was high because it was based upon the success of the company.

I think his salary and bonus was entirely determined by the board of directors. He claims it was high because it was based upon the success of the company.

Sounds like a reasonable reasoning process to me. You have a company that during his tenure has risen to #1 (IIRC) on the fortune XXX list and has been the most profitable in the industry.

is it really wrong to pay somebody hundreds of millions of dollars if he's successfully running a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars?

:no:

Is he single?

.. someone had to ask