Is superstar railroad executive Hunter Harrison worth a $200 million pay package? For that matter, is any CEO worth that?
The question has arisen in a shareholder activist’s campaign to shake up CSX Corp., one of North America’s major railroads. To sway investors and board members, Paul Hilal has promised to install Harrison as the company’s chief executive officer. In the rail business, that’s like a basketball owner vowing to recruit LeBron James. And like James, Harrison doesn’t come cheap.
In a highly unusual public negotiation, Harrison, 72, is demanding compensation in the nine figures to take the job, much of it tied to stock awards. The CSX board has said it would welcome Harrison as CEO, but not at the pay level requested, calling it “exceptionally unusual, if not unprecedented” for an incoming boss. Indeed, Harrison would be in the rarefied compensation neighborhood of people like investment banker Paul J. Taubman or Patrick Soon-Shiong, the pharma billionaire.
By Anders Melin and Frederic Tomesco, March 6th, 2017, Bloomberg Technology
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