Transparency, Internet Style--1999 CEO Compensation

The Numbers Are In and the Winner Is... Last week (May 31, 2000) the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, "Kennedy-Wilson's Cheap Stock May Not Counter CEO's Rich Pay." According to the article some folks are upset that CEO William McMorrow earned a total of $3.7 million, when the company's net income was only $5.6 million and the stock price has been slumping. Kennedy-Wilson's (Nasdaq: KWIC) sales totaled about $110 million in 1999 and the current market capitalization is about $45 million. So I thought that I'd check out the pay of the CEOs of the five large service providers traded on the NYSE (CB, G&E, Insignia, JLL and Trammell).

It's pretty easy to do. Go to Yahoo Finance at http://finance.yahoo.com. Enter the stock symbol. Then click "Profile" under "More Info." Finally, scroll down the page until you get to "Officers" and you'll see their F1999 compensation. George Lippe of Trammell Crow (TCC) weighed in at $1.4 million. (TCC:sales of $716m and a current market capitalization of $426m.) Stuart Scott of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) received $1.1m. (JLL: sales of $841m with a current market cap of $467m.) Ray Wirta of CB Richard Ellis (CBG) received $725k. (CBG: sales of $1.24b and a current market cap of $205m.) At the low end of the totem pole was Neil Young (Is that why he left?) of Grubb & Ellis (GBE), who received $678k. (GBE: sales of $385m and market cap of $123m.)

Yahoo doesn't have Insignia Financial Group's 1999 compensation numbers posted yet. So I went to one of my favorite sites, the 10K Wizard www.10kwizard.com and looked up Insignia (IFS). I entered the symbol in the Ticker box and generated a list of recent SEC filings. Go to Form 10-K/A, which amends the previously filed Form 10-K for 1999. Click the arrow button to the right to pull down the menu. Find the Summary Compensation Table (550) under Item 11. It looks like Andrew Farkas, CEO of Insignia received a total of about $2.5 million. (IFS: 1999 sales of $747m and a current market capitalization of $238m.) So he wins the prize among the five NYSE firms!

--Peter