Will shareholders halt the inexorable rise of CEO pay?

LAST YEARGECEOCEO was a terrible one for travel of any sort. You would not know it from the way some American chief executives trousered pay. Annual filings show that Larry Culp, boss of , whose jet-engine business stalled as aviation nosedived, earned $73m, almost triple his total pay in 2019. Christopher Nassetta, of Hilton, a hotel chain, enjoyed a 161% pay boost, receiving $55.9m. Norwegian Cruise Line, which described 2020 as the hardest year in its history, more than doubled the compensation of its , Frank Del Rio, to $36.4m. All three were among the corporate titans who grandly took cuts in their basic pay and/or bonuses during the pandemic. They pocketed far more than they gave up.They did so thanks to a nifty conjuring trick performed in boardrooms across America last year. In effect, many boards airbrushed away the impact of covid-19 on performance-based pay either by removing a quarter or two of bad numbers in order to meet bonus targets, changing the metrics mid-course, or—as with Messrs Culp, Nassetta and Del Rio—by issuing new share grants after the pandemic gutted the previous ones. (Mr Culp and Mr Del Rio also got contract extensions.)