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Executive bonuses should be in long-term stock, Obama’s pay czar thinks

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The gap between the amount of money Wall Street executives think they should make and what ordinary citizens think such tycoons should earn ‘is a chasm,’ Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama‘s executive-pay czar, told business journalists in Phoenix on Friday. ‘It’s like Pluto and Earth.’

In his remarks to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Feinberg talked about his negotiations over top pay with the large banks and automobile companies that accepted federal bailout money.

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He was careful not to offer his views on what executives should earn at companies that did not accept federal money.

But Feinberg said he thinks bonuses for top officials should be in the form of stock that can be redeemed only over a set period of time, rather than immediately.

That way, he said, CEOs and others at the top would have an incentive to help their companies thrive over the long term.

-- Sharon Bernstein

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