Excessive pay deal?

John Durie on the back page of The Oz puts forward a suggestion: if the Telstra board ignores the vote against the proposed executive pay package (see SMH discussion here, then the logical step is to vote out the board. Heh. Let's see if the government (or the Future Fund) are prepared to do that!

Pay for, err, performance?

Concern about Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo pay package. Looks like lots of his so-called 'long-term' incentives vest in about 10 months. That doesn't sound like 'long-term' to me. The SMH article also highlights a problem with executive pay packages; i.e., who designs them. In this case, it looks like remuneration consultants who previously worked for US West, one of Trujillo's former employers. It's hard to determined whether these consultants are working for the shareholders, or the CEO. Nah, that's not true. It's not hard at all. Think about who engages these consultants.

Why I love Telstra

Each semester when we discuss management communication, I keep saying that it would be dumb to announce record profits and at the same time sack thousands of workers. Or lower forecast profits and higher executive pay. Semester after semester, Telstra keeps doing something like that. This time around, it's offering "prudent" guidance about future earnings and at the same time fattening the wallets of the management team.