No End to Golden Parachutes for CEOs

Despite years of public outcry against golden parachute deals, multimillion-dollar severance packages for chief executives of corporations are still common, the New York Times reports. Today, about 82 percent of the chiefs of Standard & Poor's 500 companies are entitled to some type of cash payment if they are replaced upon a change in control, according to GMI Ratings, a corporate governance firm. "They became larger in an era when executives were resistant to having companies sold and having new management come in and basically firing the CEO," said Mark Kennedy of Imperial College Business School. "Nobody had any idea how big they would become." A graphic in the Times shows the top 10 exit packages, which range from $23 million to $159 million.

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