CEOs Paid to Crash
Author: Al Lewis</br></br>As the portfolios of ordinary shareholders imploded in the second stock-market crash of the 21st century, CEOs looked up from the smoke and ashes and breathed a collective sigh of, "Hey, you know what? It's a buying opportunity."</br></br>Only CEOs don't have to buy. They get their crony boards to award them stock options.</br></br>More than 90% of the CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index loaded up with stocks or options in the grim, uncertain months between October 2008 and September 2009. And the value of this largely free equity has since grown by more than $3 billion, according to an analysis of S&P data published by The Wall Street Journal last week.</br></br>The crash allowed our fearless corporate leaders to bet on a scary market at an extremely low price with no risk to themselves. And since the market had crashed so hard, and stock was so cheap, they were able to bag larger numbers of options and shares as well.