甲骨文股东要求CEO埃里森减工资

    甲骨文公司（Oracle）股东对拉里•埃里森的巨额薪酬已经忍无可忍。

    甲骨文公司与其他美国公司一样，必须在每年的股东大会上提交高管薪酬方案，由股东投票表决。过去三年中，甲骨文公司所获最高支持率为三分之二；而在过去两年中，有五分之三的大股东对高管薪酬方案持反对意见。而这个结果应该在意料之中。多年来，甲骨文公司的股东一直在提出决议，反对公司的高管薪酬方案，今年也不例外。

    因为甲骨文CEO拉里•埃里森拥有公司约25%的已发行股票，甲骨文公司最后还是获得了对薪酬方案的微弱支持。埃里森不会投票反对自己的薪水，但是，如果刨除埃里森的股份，几乎没有股东会批准这家公司的高管薪酬方案。

    去年，埃里森的薪酬约为1.53亿美元，跻身美国薪水最高的高管之列。他薪酬的98%左右通过行使股票优先购买权获得；而他的薪水只有1美元。过去七年中，甲骨文公司董事会每年都会向埃里森授予700万份股票期权。这么高的几率，，想不取得巨额收益都难。

    虽然缺乏对薪酬方案的支持，但去年，甲骨文公司的薪酬委员会还是决定，“没有充分理由对高管薪酬方案进行重大改革，”同时再次向埃里森授予了700万份期权。甲骨文公司目前尚未公布任何薪酬方案变更计划，公司发言人也拒绝发表评论。

    各家公司通常依据同业公司高管的薪酬确定本公司CEO的薪酬。但是，在甲骨文公司界定的同业公司中，CEO们的薪酬远远低于埃里森的薪酬。高管薪酬研究公司Equilar近期为《纽约时报》（New York Times）开展的薪酬调查显示，2013年，埃里森的薪酬达到7,840万美元，在美国前200名高薪CEO中名列第三。而且，这个排名还只计算了他在2013年获得的700万份股权的价值，不包括行使原有期权获得的收益。思科公司（Cisco）的约翰•钱伯斯2013年的薪水为2,100万美元，与埃里森的薪水最为接近，而高通公司（Qualcomm）的保罗•雅各布以2,040万美元的薪水紧随其后。

    甲骨文的其他同业公司高管的薪水如下：惠普公司（HP）玛格利特•惠特曼1,760万美元；IBM公司（IBM）罗睿兰1,400万美元；购物网站eBay约翰•唐纳荷1,380万美元。他们的薪酬都没能进入前200名。

    那么，甲骨文公司到底怎么想的？甲骨文公司远远不是业内最大的公司。例如，2013年，IBM的收入约为1,000亿美元，而甲骨文公司的收入仅为370亿美元。

    Oracle shareholders have had enough with Larry Ellison’s gargantuan paycheck.

    Like other U.S. companies, the company must submit its top pay packages to an annual shareholder vote. Over the last three years, the best Oracle ORCL 0.33% could muster was two-thirds support, and, in the last two years, a three-fifths majority opposed the plans. This should not come as a surprise. Oracle shareholders have been putting forward resolutions objecting to executive pay for years. And this year looks to be no different.

    Oracle has only managed to gain the little support it has for its pay packages because CEO Larry Ellison owns some 25% of outstanding shares in the company. He’s not going to vote against his own pay, but if you take those shares out of the mix, hardly any shareholders approve of the executive salaries at the company.

    Last year, Ellison made almost $153 million, making him one of the highest paid executives in the U.S. Some 98% of this compensation came from profits on exercising stock options; he only gets $1 in salary. In each of the last seven years, Oracle’s board has awarded Ellison 7 million stock options. It’s not hard to make a vast amount of profit when the odds are that great.

    Despite the lack of support for its pay policies, last year Oracle’s compensation committee determined “that significant changes to our executive compensation program were not warranted,” and it awarded Ellison another 7 million options. The company has not announced any plans to change to its pay practices. A spokesman for Oracle declined to comment.

    Companies often determine how much they pay their CEOs based on how much similar companies pay their chief execs. But none of the CEOs at companies that Oracle itself has identified as peers are paid anywhere near as much as Ellison. A recent Equilar pay surveyfor the New York Times pegs Ellison at No. 3 out of the top 200 highest paid CEOs in the U.S., with $78.4 million in compensation in 2013. That’s just counting the value of the seven million options he received in 2013 rather than the profits made on exercising older options. The closest peer is Cisco’s John Chambers, who made $21 million in 2013, then Paul Jacobs at Qualcomm with $20.4 million.

    The only other peers in the list are HP’s HPQ 5.30% Margaret Whitman at $17.6 million, IBM’s IBM 0.74% Virginia Rometty at $14 million and John Donahoe at eBay with $13.8 million. None of Oracle’s other peers made the top 200.

    So, what is Oracle thinking? It’s far from the largest company in its peer group. IBM’s revenues for 2013, for example, were almost $100 billion, compared to $37 billion at Oracle.