Large companies in the United States have begun to expand their strategies to reduce their costs and part of these include cut the salaries of their CEOs.
Several sectors of the country’s economy, mainly technology, have undertaken a series of massive layoffs in their work plantsgiven fears of a possible recession.
However, these cost adjustments appear not to be enough for large corporations, where CEO salaries are now in the spotlight.
Not even the great CEOs of the technology sector have been spared from reductions in their annual salaries, since even one of the best-known bosses around the world, Apple CEO Tim Cook has seen his perceptions drop year on year.
But he is not the only one, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman, is already on the list of executives who will receive less money this year, the same as the executive director of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, who also had his salary cut.
2022: a year of poor results
Last year was punctually complicated for some sectors of the economy, which are now going through a time of adjustments that imply layoffs of thousands of workers; In the technology industry alone, layoffs are estimated to have exceeded 190,000.
The data leaves no doubt, 2022 was a terrible year for the stock market and the worst for the S&P since 2008, according to a report from CNN.
With thousands of workers laid off, now it is the turn of the CEOs of large companies, whose salaries are also in the crosshairs of the austerity plans with which corporations are preparing for a difficult year.
Some of the CEOs who have seen their salaries cut are Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, whose salary was cut by nearly 30% by the investment bank’s Governing Board, to leave it at $25 million dollars annually.
In this case, Goldman Sachs’ results for 2022 showed a 49% drop in earnings, compared to 2021, a result that was described as “disappointing.”
After presenting its results, Goldman Sachs confirmed the massive layoff of 3,200 employees, as part of its cost reduction plans.
But he is not the only one, Solomon is accompanied by the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, of whom the company announced that it had cut its salary compensation package, to leave it with a not inconsiderable salary of $49 million dollars.
Other CEOs of companies that have carried out cutbacks can go down this same path, such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who announced the mass layoff of 12,000 employees two weeks ago.
Pichai himself anticipated what would happen with his perceptions for which he would accept a “very significant” salary cut, according to a Business Insider report.
CEOs still earn enviable salaries
Despite the cuts that have already been made public in the salaries of some CEOs, their earnings remain enviable for most workers in any sector of the economy.
An investigation carried out by Equilar revealed that the median CEO salary was $14.2 million annuallyfor fiscal year 2021, within the 500 largest public companies by earnings.
This data showed an increase of 18.9% compared to the average annual salary of CEOs in fiscal year 2020, according to this research.
Meanwhile, the CEOs of these same companies have received the highest salary increases with an average of 42.1% in 2021, which translates into average salary adjustments of $19.1 million dollars.
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