Citizen Investors 1, Fat Cat CEOs $435 million

By Dominic Jones

BOB NARDELLI, chairman and CEO of home improvement giant Home Depot, resigned or was fired today after being hounded by shareholders for taking home one of the biggest pay packages in business even while the company’s stock floundered.

Depending on who you believe – the Financial Times or Bloomberg — Nardelli was paid either $120 million or $225 million during his six-year stint at Home Depot. By agreeing to leave the company, or being pushed out, he will get an additional sum of $210 million.

So that’s either $330 million or $435 million. But let’s not split hairs, after the first 10 mil it’s all gravy.

Now according to Bloomberg, for whatever amount Nardelli actually received, shareholders got this:

“Home Depot lost market share to Lowe’s Cos. since Nardelli started in December 2000, and the shares declined 7.9 percent. The company is headed for its smallest annual gain in profit in at least nine years.”

In a new book that I wrote about today, Home Depot and Nardelli are provided as an example or how a new breed of Citizen Investors are holding corporations to account.

Seems to me Citizen Investors don’t drive a hard bargain. For $210 million, wouldn’t it have been better to “promote” the guy to some non-operational figurehead position? In China, perhaps?

If you’re interested in more about this, try this Google News search results page or the New York Times

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