FT.com / Companies / Personal Goods - Share gains help Reckitt chief reap £90m .
The FT notes:
Bart Becht, chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser, collected more than £90m last year after the group’s strong stock market performance led to large share option gains.
The consumer products maker also said that he had donated Reckitt shares worth about £110m to a charitable trust in recent months.
Four comments:
a) No one is worth that much
b) No one needs that much - as he proves through his "gift" to charity (which, I wonder? - if his own, why is tax relief allowed?) - and, indeed, how come he will get a tax rebate on this personally of over £20 million?
c) Tax relief on all pay over 10 times median pay should not be allowed
d) We need a high pay commission.
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Richard,
although we could definitely argue on how much Mr Bart Becht deserves for his work (maybe £90m is too much), I am sure that the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway would totally disagree with you and would consider Warren Buffett priceless, whatever a high pay commission or anybody else would say. In a normal market economy someone generating hundreds or billions of profits for the shareholders should be rewarded properly.
Example 1: Steve Jobs
In the last 12 months the market capitalization of Apple increased by 112 billion dollars, and it generated 9,3 billion after-tax profits.
Example 2: Jeff Bezos
In the last 12 months the market capitalization of Amazon increased by 34 billion dollars, and it generated $907 million after-tax profits.
So, how much would you (or a high pay commission) value them?
And also, you wrote “No one needs that much”. Probably Mr Becht should be left alone to decide how much he needs.
Workers create wealth but money makes money. How to correct this anomaly should be what economics is about. Mr. Becht does not create the wealth he has acquired. If there were no workers producing this wealth he would have nothing.
Four more comments:
a) No one is “worth” anything. Some people happen to be more fortunate.
b) Since when have employees been paid according to their need?
c) Income & corporation taxes are taxes on profits/net income. If the profits are incurred in the course of the business, there is no reason not to grant relief. As it turns out the “income” was actually from gains on shares, so the company would not have incurred any costs in relation to Mr Becht’s good fortune.
d) Who needs a high pay commission? Mr Becht is Dutch.