Bang for the buck.

AuthorMildenberg, David
PositionRanking of large companies' chief executives' salaries

Like the weather, a lot of people complain about executive pay, but nobody does anything about it.

Or so it seemed until CEO-turned-gadfly Craig Redwine decided to take on Jefferson-Pilot Chairman W. Roger Soles.

Redwine's basic theme, which he unveiled at Jefferson-Pilot's 1991 annual meeting and has repeated in lawsuits and press releases ever since, is pretty straight-forward: He paints Soles, who turns 71 this month, as an aging, vastly overpaid autocrat who rolls over Jefferson-Pilot's board despite the company's mediocre stock performance of the past decade. Treasury bills did better than Jefferson-Pilot's stock during the past five years, he complains.

Soles responded with a blend of gruff sarcasm and bitter defensiveness, his jowly jaw jutting and his face reddening.

His $3.3 million compensation in 1990 -- which includes a board-approved, unrestricted grant of 50,000 shares of Jefferson-Pilot stock -- was fair, he said, quoting Babe Ruth's famous line, "I had a better year than the president."

He pointed out that Jefferson-Pilot's annual shareholder return averaged 17.5% during the '80s. (The return was 8.6% from 1986-90.) The 10-year performance exceeded most stocks, including Interstate/Johnson Lane, which sunk into near-penny-stock range during Redwine's tenure as CEO.

Jefferson-Pilot has a succession plan, Soles said, but that's privileged information. (He left unanswered why five different men have been Jefferson-Pilot's second-highest-paid executive during the past five years.)

That Soles' pay was an easy target for Redwine's barbs is obvious from BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's first ranking CEO compensation. His pay, which includes the 50,000 shares, is more than 60% higher than the state's second-highest-paid CEO.

There are just about as many ways of comparing the performance and pay of CEOs as there are business magazines. BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA decided to use two measures: What the boss has done for shareholders, and what sort of profits the company has produced in the three years ending Dec. 31, 1990. The 75 publicly held companies were divided into two groups, those with market values above $100 million (33 companies) and below $100 million (42 companies). CEOs of the state's five investor-owned utilities were excluded from the rankings because of the companies' monopoly status.

Two of the state's highest-profile CEOs -- John Medlin, Jr. of Wachovia Corp. and F. Kenneth Iverson of Nucor -- top the big-company list as the...

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