When senior executive pay becomes parody: Transocean edition
Transocean awards bonuses to senior management at least in part based on safety. That looks honorable to me.
But as the WSJ reports:
Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.
Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.
The payout contrasts with that for 2009, when the company withheld all executive bonuses after incurring four fatalities that year "to underscore the company's commitment to safety."
I want to express my view about the obligation of shareholders to hold management accountable and the problems in corporate law and practice that make that difficult (eg staggered boards) but sometimes you need to just look in wonder at where we have got to.
John