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Every October, some 50 former Home Depot managers, calling themselves the Former Orange-Blooded Executives, after the home-improvement chain's trademark bright orange color, gather in Atlanta to reminisce, chat about new jobs and pass around pictures of their children.

Demonstrators who shut down a global trade meeting in Seattle last year and brawled with police at the Republican National Convention plan to show up in force for President-elect Bush's inauguration next month.

It happens only once a year, and yet so many headstrong corporate CEO's can't seem to cope with being in a room with shareholders for a few hours at the annual meeting.

Amid growing concern over a wave of cutbacks in corporate pension plans for employees, the CEOs of top U.S. companies would receive "golden pensions" that range from $2 million to $6.5 million a year, according to a study by the AFL-CIO union federation.

Violence in Kashmir and nuclear proliferation are dominating the mainstream headlines on President Clinton's trip to South Asia. And while security issues are clearly on the agenda in Clinton's meetings with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the press is ignoring an equally significant part of the trip: trade.

An analysis of 282 local executives at 109 area companies who have had the same title from 2003 until the end of 2005 showed that merely sticking around gives an executive an excellent chance of getting a raise, sometimes a big one. In many cases, raises are dictated by employment contracts or other compensation practices that have nothing to do with an executive's job performance and are often divorced from the kind of market logic that dictates how most people are paid.

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