Highest Paid CEOs, Disney’s Iger #3
Associated Press recently listed its highest-paid CEOs for 2008 list with only one media appointment: Bob Iger of The Walt Disney Company in 3rd place with $51.1 million. With the majority of the top 10 being finance and industrial-based, it’s interesting to see that media/content still has a hold on the environment. With ESPN’s continued growth, Pixar integration, Disney’s recent partnership with NBC/Fox’s Hulu, teen-star “Hannah Montana” and “High School Musical” talent factories, the start of DisneyNature and relatively strong film and tv revenues, not to mention the ongoing international expansion, Disney is running a very diversified content business in a market favoring global tech-based scalability. Alongside a News Corp/20th Century Fox model that slants toward print, news and politics, Disney has maintained a clean global brand while expanding in tech. And, although it’s a big compensation foothold in Iger’s case, it speaks to the power of entertainment and its role in innovating the US. If one of our bigger exports is entertainment, shouldn’t those who drive branded expansion be rewarded? After the jump, a breakdown of the other CEO list-makers and the New Medici “3Ways” to continue innovation…
Contrary to Nikki Finke, who slams the “golden coffin” Iger as another example of media cluelessness, the ability to juggle the demands of a media network that’s not tied to a family legacy are formidable.
With a well-liked persona and aggressive approach to innovating the markeplace, Iger’s income levels represent a high commitment to keeping Disney at the top of the content pack.
Iger’s compensation package is broken out as follows:
As CEO of Walt Disney in 2008, Robert A. Iger earned a total compensation of $51,072,580, which included a base salary of $2,000,000, a cash bonus of $13,945,493, stocks granted of $5,904,000, and options granted of $28,449,997
Between CBS’s Les Moonves, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, Philippe Dauman and Paramount’s Brad Grey, NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker and Ron Meyer, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch (and former COO Peter Chernin), Sony’s Howard Stringer with Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton, and MGM’s Harry Sloan, there’s a lot of compensation lucre in the marketplace.
In comparison to financial services (Amex and Goldman) and industrial companies (Chesapeak Energy Corp, Philip Morris and Apache), there isn’t the obvious scalability in content as there is to finance, utilities and tech.
The ability to continually expand content reach, partner wisely and expand brand requires an ability to see beyond content creation and distribution, into which technologies are going to increase company value.
From the looks of Disney’s growth, its quiet but clean goals and potential to become even more global without discounting its US entertainment consumers – i.e., going more universal without becoming too generic to the US – it will continue to structure interesting dealflow.
3Ways to Innovate: Disney
- With continued losses in print/magazine – time for Disney to shift to more online news growth and aggregation, as Yahoo!, Google and others are still trying to figure out model.
- More media portals/channels and in mobile – DisneyNature and Idealbite.com are good starts, but roll up green marketplace for content, as well as innovation (buy TED or replicate, and expand it aggressively overseas).
- On top of the green, more humanitarianism focus in terms of media. Recent partnership with Participant Media is valuable, but where else can you roll it up to create “studio with a cause” marketplace? Diversified relief equals diversified support.
The list below with links are relevant backgrounds on these exec, pulled from Wikipedia and major news services. For other CEOs on the rise, this list is interesting to see who the risk-takers are in terms of innovating deals and surviving recessions.
The Top 10 Highest-Paid CEOs:
1. Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy Corp., $112.5 million
2. Sanjay Jha, Motorola Inc., $104.4 million
3. Robert Iger, Walt Disney Co., $51.1 million
4. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $42.9 million
5. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co., $42.9 million
6. Vikram Pandit, Citigroup Inc., $38.2 million
7. Steven Farris, Apache Corp., $37.2 million
8. Louis Camilleri, Philip Morris International Inc., $36.9 million
9. Kevin Johnson, Juniper Networks Inc., $36.1 million
10. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co., $35.7 million
The total pay figures are rounded and are based on the AP’s compensation formula, which adds up salary, perks, bonuses, preferential interest rates on pay set aside for later, and company estimates for the value of stock options and stock awards on the day they were granted last year.