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Comment by jljljl | Hacker News Reader

I'm not going to argue about how much Vikram Pandit should be paid, but its worth noting that the 2011 bonus and beyond came after:

1) Pandit was paid a $1 salary for 2009 and 2010 2) Pandit not receiving a bonus for nearly 4 years [1]

It's probably better to look at Pandit's pay across his entire tenure as CEO, vs. objecting to a single lump sum payment.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-12/pandit-compensation...

Also, while Tim Cook is not quite the visionary that Steve Jobs is, Apple's supply chain and ability to exert quality and pricing pressure over suppliers is a huge competitive advantage, and arguably one that keeps their profits so far above other hardware manufacturers.

There are plenty of companies with awesome vision that fail because they can't execute the way Apple can.

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When Steve Jobs accepted the job as a interim-CEO to clean-up Sculley's mistakes, back when Apple was almost bankrupt, he accepted the $1 salary on the expectation that he would be paid only if Apple would perform well. That's how much faith and commitment he had in Apple succeeding, and that was before the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad...

Compare Steve Jobs attitude with Pandit's, who announced he would "reduce" his salary to $1 in 2009, only after the $25b in govt bail-out. On that same year, he was compensated "just a few million dollars" (as opposed to $38m in 2008), plus $165m for his hedge fund. [1]

Yes, Pandit was overpaid.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Pandit#Compensation

First, including the $165M from the sale of a hedge fund in his CEO compensation is misleading. He received this for a completely different reason than his tenure as CEO.

Second, if you are going to include Pandit's full compensation, you need to include the millions of Apple shares that Steve Jobs received for his tenure as Chairman of the Board at Apple:

In 2003, The Board awarded Jobs 10M restricted shares of Apple, arguably a much larger compensation than what Pandit received: http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-07-...

He also received a Gulfstream Jet from the board, valued at something like $40M: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-235835.html

My statement "on the expectation that he would be paid only if Apple would perform well" meant "paid in bonuses", which includes the shares and perks. Also, I never stated that Jobs made less than Pandit -- You said first: We are not arguing about compensation here.

Point being: Jobs accepted a new position and would earn money only if he would deliver. Pandit in the other hand would make money regardless what was the outcome, staying on the position he was before. He screwed it up, got bail-out by the government, reduced his salary to $1 as a mea-culpa, then made a bunch of money and left. Is this what a good CEO would do?

>>> He screwed it up

To say that Pandit, who became CEO in December 2007, somehow screwed up Citibank, reflects a misunderstanding of the history of the crisis.

The CDO and MBS markets had been in place for a decade, and were already cratering when Pandit was brought on, and in fact he was brought in to replace the previous CEO following "unexpectedly poor Q3 performance."

Pandit took a reduced salary in 2009 following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in fall 2008, which eventually led to the creation of TARP funding. His compensation was only brought back after 2 years and 5 consecutive quarters of profitability.

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