A pretty feeble attempt to defend the well night indefensible.
A bit of very grudging admission that there might perhaps be a tiny issue, a bit of silly rhetoric about 'creeping socialism' (obviously something that is OK when it comes to paying the workers, though), and the usual CEO club's stale 'pay peanuts and you'll get monkeys' line, the last of which is always trotted out as if it conveyed some profound, universal and debate-closing truth. The stuff about 'remuneration packages' - always a 'package' isn't it; they love euphemisms for 'pay' - being 'internationally competitive' is the classic example of begging the question! Worldwide, boards and CEOs comprise a club in which the members pay themselves whatever they can get away with. 'Internationally competitive' completely ignores the question of whether CEOs anywhere should be receiving so much money.

What's the correlation between financial success of a particular corporation and the salary levels of its senior managers? Not very strong I suspect. Japanese corporations achieved very high growth rates for decades with relatively low ratios between the highest and lowest paid employees in their companies, for some reason,we in the West, find it necessary to pay our "captains" of industry huge salaries because the "market" requires it. We value paper entrepreneurs above engineers and scientists and pay the price in unsustainable "profits" which often disappear sooner or later. Any arrangements that enable shareholders to approve and scrutinize senior managers' salaries is an improvement.

No you are all wrong. The author is on the money here.

I think these CEOs should also give back any government subsidies, corporate welfare payments or bailout money we wouldn't want them to be accused of feeding the evil socialist machine either.

Snigger...

oh god, not the creeping socialist again, its clammy fingers on my leg, my heart, my brain...telling me to object to greed, to value community more than profit...away damnable perfidy! Go back to Bolivia and leave us to do honourable battle...you know,the thrust and parry of Illustrious Capitalism and all that...Pity we're still carrying sticks (and forget about the CEOs - if we're going to have socialism let's leap over the bodies of the obscene executive and go for the full body corporate, its bloated excrescence surely more deserving than a few symbolic elite). I suspect that the entire point of the focus on executives is so that we don't pay attention to the real problem - the age of corporate governance in which corporations are larger than countries - and act just as western countries did for decades as they exploited the resources of others.

>> the more naturally attuned market forces

god. people still toss off cheap nonsense like this as if it means something?

Warren Buffet takes home an annual salary of about $US100,000 for running Berkshire Hathaway. On that scale, I'd say Sol Trujillo and his amigos are worth about $A10,000. Per decade. Shared between them. And that would be including bonuses and lunch money.