Platform: Regular readers will know that I sometimes get on my soapbox about the amount of "compensation" that senior executives feel is their due as they lead their corporations through good times and bad, writes Sheila O'Flanagan.
Funnily enough, even in bad times the senior execs seem to do quite well, although I absolutely accept that steering your company through choppy waters is a lot more stressful than being at the helm when everything in the garden is rosy.
Attempts to link compensation and bonus packages to performance, although laudable in principle, have often resulted in chief executives embarking on short-term strategies to bump up the bottom line so that the bonuses kick in, while letting the longer term look after itself.
To be fair to the captains of industry, most of them are people who are driven to succeed and the hefty compensation packages are only part of what spurs them on. But nobody believes that it isn't about the money either.
The latest annual compensation report published in the US by United for a Fair Economy shows that chief executives of big corporations make as much from a single day on the job as an average worker makes in the entire year.
Chief executives are currently earning 364 times the pay of an average worker, up from 40 times more 20 years ago. And if you're a top hedge fund manager, you are likely to have made 22,255 times the average wage.
The report also points out that business leaders in the US make significantly more money than their counterparts in the public sector.
The 20 highest-paid business leaders picked up 3,315 times more in 2006 than the top 20 government officials, including the US president.
Of course one can argue the relative value of a hedge fund manager versus the president of the US and decide that the money men are worth 3,315 George Bushes, and perhaps you would be right. But is a hedge fund manager who spends his or her time trawling around the financial world looking for anomalous pricing and devising ever more complicated financial structures, which can then cause chaos in the financial markets, really worth 22,255 times the average worker? You don't have to be a liberal lefty to think there's something very wrong about those differentials.
This week Stan O'Neal, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, became the first Wall Street executive forced to pack his bags after informing the market that he had been a little off beam with his prediction of a whopping €2.7 billion third-quarter loss due to exposure to mortgage-backed instruments.
Merrill actually wrote down more than €5.5 billion. O'Neal's annual compensation was just over €13 million. For that money, I'd expect accuracy on the predictions. And a better handle on the risk management. O'Neal spent the weekend negotiating a severance package estimated at about €111 million.
In the UK, too, there is anger at the amount of money the senior executives are taking from their businesses. This week, Income Data Services showed that, excluding bonuses and options, high-ranking executives saw their basic pay increase by 11.2 per cent last year. Average compensation packages pale in comparison to the US but the executives still earn more than €4 million a year.
Brendan Barber of the Trades Union Congress called it "morally offensive greed" and "bad for the rest of society".
As usual the Confederation of British Industry trotted out the line that companies have to pay more to retain the best talent in a global marketplace. But clearly that isn't the case. For his €13 million, Stan O'Neal cut costs by making staff redundant and then plunged Merrill into a miasma of risky debt. It's a talent, of course. But is it really one your company wants?
Top people deserve to be paid well. But it is wrong to create what Barber calls a "super-rich class . . . detached from the rest of society". At some point there has to be a realisation that people at the top are being paid too much for what they do.
Political leaders in Europe, the UK and the US may think that, compared with titans of industry, they're getting the thin end of the wedge.
Public representatives have never earned as much as entrepreneurs. But at least we've taken steps to stop our own leaders from being lured away to high-paying overseas jobs thanks to the Review Body for Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector, which awarded Bertie Ahern a 14 per cent pay hike.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen justified the increases on the basis that the Irish economy is worth €55 billion (Ireland's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 was €125 billion).
The Taoiseach is paid more than Bush (GDP €9 trillion), German chancellor Angela Merkel (GDP €1.8 trillion), and British prime minister Gordon Brown (GDP €1.3 trillion).
Someone, somewhere is getting a bargain. We just have to figure out who.
