Facebook Details Executive Salaries, Bonuses 168
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has detailed the pay of 27-year-old Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well as four other executives. These are people who are set to be billionaires at least on paper when the company goes public as part of its $5 billion initial public offering (IPO). All five individuals are in line for annual target bonuses of 45 percent of their salary plus other base wages. For Zuckerberg, the bonus could amount to roughly $225,000 this year, based on his annual salary of $500,000."
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, Jobs only got $1 annual salary, plus lots of stock options (at a "special" rate). Since he didn't get paid a salary that could be taxed, he "borrowed" against his stock and options, which is not taxable until the options are converted to stock, or the stock sold, and then it is "capital gains", and not simple income, at a much lower tax rate... So, in effect, he was paid million$, but had a tax burden much less, percentage-wise, than the rest of us working schlubs!
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs and Zuck will also own a large chunk of a different class of shares that the typical stock price. These special shares will have things like more voting rights, potentially pay a dividend or similar every year, they may (or may not, depending) be unlimited liability rather than traditional limited liability stocks and so on. I'm not quite sure how apple and facebook do (or will do) it, but this is pretty common for most big companies.
It's because of these different share classes that zuck will be able to give himself 60% of the voting power in the company, despite owning only about 25% of the value of the company.
Being the CEO of a company comes with a few perks too. That private jet the company owns? You're using it for business purposes, even if you're flying to florida for golfing, it's always part of your security/connectedness/etc. requirement, and because you're golfing with the CEO of another company it's business meeting, so it's not a taxable benefit since it is for work.
Over the years regulators have become less fond of the more archaic schemes, like rather than hiring you, they're contracting sir_sri management services, a wholly own subsidiary of Sri's Cayman Island management group, where Sri officially claims residence, so the housing, provided by the company, is a 'temporary residence' and for the use of any of Sir_Sri Management services employees who may be required to fulfill the terms of the contract (not disclosed), and they're families who may also have an expense account to deal with the temporary relocation from the Cayman islands. Oh and because you're only there temporarily, all your meals, and general housing services are also covered expenses*.
* a lot of this still happens a lot, justifiably so, on shorter term stuff.
Re:What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Shooting Zuckerberg and Murdoch? Murdoch is a scumbag that actively tries to have laws changed to hurt regular people, so I could understand some vitriol there.
But all Zuckerberg did was make a service that millions of people love. And he did it without selling anyone's personal information, buying draconian legislation, etc.
You might find facebook annoying, or be jealous of his site's success, but let's not get stupid.
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow! I didn't realize it was charity to pay taxes, given it's taxes that provide services oneself enjoys* but, if wealthy enough, services that others enjoy as well. Well, I guess it is charity in the sense that it means potentially paying more than you get out for the benefit of others. Personally, I'd just consider that a common duty of anyone with the means towards humanity. But, then, I take that from the idea that just because you're not a completely selfish dick and rose above doing the absolute minimum when it comes to contributing to the world doesn't make your actions charity.
When the tax laws are rewritten so that "reduce my tax burden as much as is legal" is pretty fluid on the word "legal" precisely because you money can more or less help buy what "legal" is, I think "that particular score" is very different. That's precisely why Warren Buffet bitched about the point that capital gains taxes are so ludicrously low, given it's precisely the rich that have the means to have so much of their assets tied up in stock and hence benefit from such an effectively low income tax rate. I mean, I don't know about you, but when companies require you to buy at least 1,000 shares of stock and stocks sell for at least $1, it's easy to see why the average person isn't going to buy much in the way of stock. Hell, when middle and upper middle class people started actually buying stocks directly (as day traders), their was an incredible amount of bitching and moaning from the rich (through a receptive media) precisely because their actions were causing disruptions in stock prices which represented a significant instability in expected returns. Of course, mutual funds were just as bitchy as they being the middlemen in stocks for the middle class didn't like missing the potential customers nor how it became clear just how illusionary stock prices really are when a relatively few can have significant disruptive effect on the stock market. But, I digress...
*Yes, I realize not everyone uses all services and plenty of people don't pay enough to cover their share of what they use. But, then short of every paying on a per-use basis, there's no way to be "fair" in that sense. Having said that, there's already the absurdity of people today who bitch they paid $X into social security and expect to get $X out, either to themselves or to their loved ones when they die, ignoring that plenty of people on social security get more than they ever paid in (the disabled, the elderly who live longer than average, etc) which makes that entirely unreasonable unless there's some expectation that the government either (a) take the $X and invest it into companies and use dividends or later sales or something to cover the difference (which wouldn't work, given the relatively low rate of return to the demand) or (b) take taxes from some other source to make up the difference (which makes social security not self-sustaining and rather misses the whole point of budgeting). Meanwhile, per-use services fall on their face for many obvious reasons (a person who is robbed of their money, is murdered, etc obviously can't pay) behind the whole injustice of such a system (not that people seem to think too much about that, but it's easy to not think about when you spend all your efforts painting government as the source of injustice). But, then, I digress again..
Re:And we care because? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it is. He entered into a secret, probably illegal (still to be tested in court) agreement with my potential employers to hold down wages.