Some of the salary cuts that corporate execs took during the coronavirus pandemic are already being reversed
Jun 27, 2020, 04:19 IST
- As the coronavirus pandemic began to ravage the economy, a number of executives across the country pledged to take pay cuts in an act of solidarity with struggling workers.
- Some companies are already starting to reinstate that payment less than a quarter later, according to Fortune's Emma Hinchliffe.
- Gene Lee, the CEO of Olive Garden's parent company Darden, said he would forgo his $1 million base salary in early April. As of early June, SEC filings showed that salary has already been reinstated.
- Similarly, Ascena Retail Group, the company behind Ann Taylor and Loft, reinstated the base salaries for all of its executives, also per to SEC filings.
- Ascena's filing noted that the pay was meant to "enable the company to retain and continue to motivate" its executives.
- Base salaries are just one aspect of CEO compensation — meaning the initial act of forgoing a salary is often symbolic, and potentially largely inconsequential.
- While some executives' base pay has been reinstated, other executives have been receiving extra equity amid the pandemic, further highlighting how complicated CEO compensation packages have become.
- Meanwhile, 47 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the last 14 weeks. The National Bureau of Economic Research said the US fell into a recession in February.
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