Friday, April 14, 2006

Another Billionaire for Bush


Remember when George Bush said, during his 2000 campaign, that he'd 'jawbone' oil producers to keep oil and gas prices low? You guessed it, his lips were moving and he was lying. No excess profits tax on the record-breaking year for Exxon Mobil and other oil and gas producers. That's why this scumbag who ran Exxon-Mobil gets a HALF BILLION dollar farewell handshake.

Oil man's half a billion dollar bye-bye

LAST year's high oil prices not only helped Exxon Mobil report $US36 billion in profit - the most ever for any corporation - they also allowed Lee Raymond to retire in style as chairman of Exxon Mobil.

Mr Raymond received a compensation package worth about $US140 million last year, including cash, stock, options and a pension plan. He is also still entitled to stock, options and long-term compensation worth at least another $US258 million, according to a proxy statement filed by Exxon with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The total sum for Mr Raymond's golden years comes to at least $US398 million ($545 million).
The compensation is among the richest known and is certain to provoke criticism of profiteering from oil prices - though oil companies say fluctuations in prices are outside their control.

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Exxon's board also agreed to pick up Mr Raymond's country club fees, allow him to use the company aircraft and pay him another $US1 million to stay on as a consultant for another year. Mr Raymond agreed to reimburse Exxon partly when he uses the company jet for personal travel.

"When is enough, enough?" asked Brian Foley, an executive compensation consultant in White Plains, New York. "This looks like a spigot that you can't turn off."


I saw this at Surburban Guerrilla.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The golden parachute Raymond received may seem excessive, but these types of packages are normal for top execs... especially ones who have been with the company as long as he has. It's also important to point out that the profits making this possible are only the natural result of the immense volume of product ExxonMobil sells--think about how much gasoline Americans use every day!

Anonymous said...

Lee Raymond spent over 40 years at ExxonMobile, playing a large role in the development of what is now America's most successful company. It is only logical that his retirement package would dwarf that of the average American, because the average American does not run a Fortune 500 company.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the comments made. I'd also like to add that when broken down Katie Couric makes twice as much reading teleprompters for half an hour a day. Yet this seems to go unnoticed.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Banyon. Sure $400 million seems excessive to the average American but he probably worked his butt off for 40 years and had a huge amount of responsibility. If he had anything to do with Exxon's huge success then he deserves to be compensated accordingly. I am sure if we looked at all the Fortune 500 company compensation packages we would see similar figures.

Anonymous said...

Trying to draw a correlation between Raymond's retirement package and gas prices is absurd. Pump prices are set by a myriad of factors, the biggest of which is the price of crude. And profits are a matter of scale--billions of people consume Big Oil's product everyday so it stands to reason that their profits would be huge.

Anonymous said...

A WPT would certainly be passed on to the consumer so how does that help us regular Joes?

Anonymous said...

Calling him a "scumbag" is excessive and he isn't getting a half billion. It's more like $100MM plus options that may or may not work out to more.

Were you as outraged when Michael Eisner at Disney/ABC got half a billion, actually $550MM, when he retired? If not, why not?