Saturday, August 10, 2013

How Greedy Workers’ Pensions Destroy the Economy, Or Not.

Let’s begin with one of these greedy workers.  Or maybe he was one of the people who fret about the workers’ pensions?
Maremont, Mark. 2013. “For McKesson’s CEO, A Pension of $159 Million.” Wall Street Journal (25 June): p. B 1.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323998604578565491579124154.html
“Executive pension plans sometimes grow to a hefty size, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, as extra retirement cushions for long-serving CEOs.”
“Then there’s the record $159 million pension benefit of John Hammergren, the current chairman and CEO of drug distributor McKesson Corp. MCK –0.93% That’s how much he would have received in a lump-sum payment had he voluntarily departed on March 31, McKesson disclosed in its annual proxy filing on Friday.”
“Compensation consultants say it’s by far the largest pension on file for a current executive of a public company, and almost certainly the largest ever in corporate America. It’s also more than double the value of the 54-year-old Mr. Hammergren’s pension six years ago.
“Mr. Hammergren has been at McKesson for 17 years, 12 of them as sole CEO, so he is significantly younger and has a shorter tenure than most other executives who have accumulated large pensions.”
“A giant pension plan was at the heart of a controversy a decade ago over the pay package of Richard Grasso, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. An outside investigation found that Mr. Grasso had amassed pension benefits with a lump-sum value of $126 million.”
My mistake.  He was probably one of those who groused about workers’ pensions
Or How About the Big Money People who Handle their Pensions?
Braun, Martin Z. and Chris Christoff. 2013. “Detroit’s Pension Funds Dogged by Bad Deals.” Bloomberg Businessweek (28 July): pp. 42-44.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-25/detroits-pension-funds-dogged-by-bad-deals
They detail how the Detroit pension plans have lost more than $10 million on each of several deals with shady characters.


California also got snookered by similar crooks.

2 comments:

ProGrowthLiberal said...

McKesson and Hammergren. Why does this ring a bell. Oh yea:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/business/13settle.html?_r=0

This is the story of their settlement with shareholders who lost over $3 billion after the merger with HBOC. The accounting fraud involved is part of what brought down Arthur Andersen LLP.

michael perelman said...

McKesson began as a great financial fraud, based on fraudulent warehouse data. He was promoted as a candidate for president.