Bankrupt Sears wants to give executives $19 million in bonuses

[JoanDavis]

From CNN

Bankrupt Sears wants to give executives $19 million in bonuses
​

New York (CNN Business)Sears is seeking court approval to pay executives as much as $19 million in quarterly bonuses while the company struggles to restructure in bankruptcy.

Three top executives could get nearly $1 million each if the company goes out of business. If Sears remains in business, they could get nearly $500,000 each for hitting the top performance targets.

Sears filed two different types of bonus plans in bankruptcy court Thursday. The first is for the top 18 "key" executives, who would collectively get as much as $2.1 million per quarter. The bonuses would only be paid in full if Sears reaches its cash-flow targets. Sears Holdings, which includes both Sears and Kmart, has been burning through cash at a rate of about $125 million a month.

A second retention bonus plan was designed to encourage 322 other unnamed executives to stay put during Sears' reorganization. They would collectively get $16.9 million a quarter, which works out to an average of about $52,000 per quarter per executive. No executive could receive more the $150,000 in bonuses for staying with the company during the bankruptcy process.

COMMENT:-

It appears that Sears' position is "It is essential to our financial health that we retain the services of these executives whose decisions drove us into bankruptcy in the first place.".

Some how, that doesn't actually seem to make sense.

Maybe Sears' real position is "If these guys jump ship then the value of our stock will plummet and a few very rich and influential people will lose a lot of money because they couldn't dump their shares in time.".

Whaddayou think?
​

Here we go again. This happened during dubya's recession. dubya wanted to give the Wall Street banks billions of taxpayer money to bail them out and the executives wanted to use that money to pay themselves bonuses and buy luxury cars, mansions and private jets. And no suprise to learn many of these greedy executives were republican supporters.

Luckily President Obama stepped in and stopped most of those payments going to crooked and greedy executives. I remember reading that the Citibank CEO wanted $50 million in taxpayer money to buy himself a second private jet. When President Obama heard about this - he put his fut down and said HELL NO.

President Obama wasn't going to allow taxpayer money to reward greedy, crooked and incompetent executives.

 

[poweRob]

Reminiscent of the Enron collapse; the muckety-mucks sold their stock and the rank and file were prevented from selling and watched their retirement circle the drain.

Let's see if this CEO fakes his death to avoid prison too.

 

[JoanDavis]

It's all comical. The CEO of my former employer did nothing to improve the company's media strategy but left with a multi million dollar parachute payment.

Didn't former HP CEO, Carly Fiorina , walk away with a multi-million $ golden parachute after she almost bankrupted the company? And this is the sort of person some Americans thought would make an excellent President.

Instead we have a man who declared bankruptcy 5 times and over 20 of his businesses went kaput ...including a casino FFS!!!

 

[Xelor]

....
It appears that Sears' position is "It is essential to our financial health that we retain the services of these executives whose decisions drove us into bankruptcy in the first place.".

Some how, that doesn't actually seem to make sense.

Maybe Sears' real position is "If these guys jump ship then the value of our stock will plummet and a few very rich and influential people will lose a lot of money because they couldn't dump their shares in time.".

Whaddayou think?
[/INDENT]

It makes more sense than does thinking can be hired and them attempting to hire an executive crew who don't know enough about Sears to be effective in resurrecting or restructuring the chain.

 

[JoanDavis]

Let's see if this CEO fakes his death to avoid prison too.

Enron's CEO, Kenneth Lay, sold all his stock before the company crashed. He told his staff and shareholders there was nothing to worry about and while he stayed filthy rich, thousands of employees and shareholders lost everything.

And just a reminder, Ken was a republican and dubya was considering putting him in charge of the US Treasury!!!

Thank God this didn't happen. Cos if Lay was in charge of the treasury, America would have gone into recession a few years earlier than when they actually did.

And who was responsible for the worst recession since the Great Depression? Yep dubya and the republican party.

But don't worry folks, The rich republicans didn't suffer. It was the 99% who copped the worst of it.

 

[JoanDavis]

Hey, the deserve that money. It wasn't easy driving one of the oldest American icons into bankruptcy.

I wonder if the executives of Toys R Us gave themselves bonuses before that business went bankrupt.

 

[MTAtech]

I wonder if the executives of Toys R Us gave themselves bonuses before that business went bankrupt.

Unfortunately, it's common. Those in power have a way of taking care of themselves.

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

It makes more sense than does thinking can be hired and them attempting to hire an executive crew who don't know enough about Sears to be effective in resurrecting or restructuring the chain.

I agree, if you are going to have incompetents running your business then it makes sense to have the VERY BEST incompetents money can buy.

I mean it worked for the Mad Hatter and watches, didn't it?

 

[The Mark]

From CNN

Bankrupt Sears wants to give executives $19 million in bonuses
​

New York (CNN Business)Sears is seeking court approval to pay executives as much as $19 million in quarterly bonuses while the company struggles to restructure in bankruptcy.

Three top executives could get nearly $1 million each if the company goes out of business. If Sears remains in business, they could get nearly $500,000 each for hitting the top performance targets.

Sears filed two different types of bonus plans in bankruptcy court Thursday. The first is for the top 18 "key" executives, who would collectively get as much as $2.1 million per quarter. The bonuses would only be paid in full if Sears reaches its cash-flow targets. Sears Holdings, which includes both Sears and Kmart, has been burning through cash at a rate of about $125 million a month.

A second retention bonus plan was designed to encourage 322 other unnamed executives to stay put during Sears' reorganization. They would collectively get $16.9 million a quarter, which works out to an average of about $52,000 per quarter per executive. No executive could receive more the $150,000 in bonuses for staying with the company during the bankruptcy process.

COMMENT:-

It appears that Sears' position is "It is essential to our financial health that we retain the services of these executives whose decisions drove us into bankruptcy in the first place.".

Some how, that doesn't actually seem to make sense.

Maybe Sears' real position is "If these guys jump ship then the value of our stock will plummet and a few very rich and influential people will lose a lot of money because they couldn't dump their shares in time.".

Whaddayou think?
​

I think the code these corporations are programmed with needs rewritten.

 

[PIPEWRENCH]

I have not agreed with many things you have posted but this one is spot on.

There most likely are many roads that will take us to the same place.

 

[Napoleon]

I agree, if you are going to have incompetents running your business then it makes sense to have the VERY BEST incompetents money can buy.

I mean it worked for the Mad Hatter and watches, didn't it?

The purpose of the current/outgoing crop of executives was not to try to save a business destined to become a penny stock. Their purpose was to oversee an organized and gradual restructuring and phase-out. And you have to make it worthwhile for executive talent to accept a position that probably won’t exist in two years or less.

 

[PIPEWRENCH]

We the people could stop it if we took back our government from them. Unfortunately we continue to be party sheep pulling the party lever electing their bought and paid for candidates. Maybe 1 day we will be smart enough to take our government from the rich and powerful. Until then all we can do is keep pointing our fingers at each other and blaming the other party while the puppet masters keep laughing all the way to the bank.

You do know what they are laughing about. They are laughing about how they both cleaned up in the savings and loan scandal.

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[Samhain]

Don't see a problem with it. 16 million for 322 executives to get them to stay on through bankruptcy is about keeping middle management & SME knowledge in place so the company can be rebuilt is an appropriate investment.