Proxy szn is once again upon us. Already, pizza transparency has fallen victim to the remorseless logic of capitalism shame aversion.
Last year, we wrapped up this festival of transparent corporate largesse by inaugurating The Proxies — a freestyle awards ceremony dedicated to the egregious.
In celebration of the return of the DEF14A drops, FT Alphaville caught up with some of last year’s winners.
2023 Winner: Chris Smith, NeoGenomics
Last year, we noted that Neogenomics chief executive Chris Smith had bagged $2.2mn in “relocation costs” upon joining the company.
Mr Smith’s compensation barely made it past the Floridian cancer drugs testing company’s shareholders , with 52.8 per cent of votes in favour and 2.8 per cent abstaining.
What’s happened since? Well, under Smith’s leadership, Neogenomics has gone from weakness to moderately reduced weakness, with its net losses improving from $144mn in 2022 to $88mn last year — to be fair, the scale of losses that make a $2.2mn moving expense look almost immaterial.
In late June last year, the company added three new independent board members . The press release does not make it clear whether any of them can access a U-Haul van should Smith need to make another move.
2023 Winner: Sheryl Sandberg, Meta Platforms
When we covered Sheryl Sandberg’s $4.3mn private jet bill — notably much larger than her boss Mark Zuckerberg’s — she had already stepped down as Meta’s chief operating officer, leaving behind a fantastic legacy .
Meta’s DEF14A for this year has yet to drop, although since she’s no longer a named executive officer, we don’t expect her jet bill to feature.
Sadder still for fans of the high flyer, she told Zucker and the gang in January that she would also be leaving the board at this year’s annual general meeting. She’ll remain as an adviser, which to us smacks of indecision — pick a direction to lean, Sheryl!
2023 Winner: W.M. “Rusty” Rush, Rush Company
Despite the eye-popping inclusion of allowances for a car, an aircraft, a cell phone and a ranch, W.M. “Rusty” Rush’s compensation package breezed past Rush Enterprises shareholders , a process that was possibly made easier by “Rusty” controlling a sizeable chunk of the voting shares. The king stay the king.
2023 Winner: SmileDirectClub
How the mighty fall. When we wrote about SmileDirectClub’s extremely self-flattering compensation set-up last year, its shares were down a mere 98 per cent since its public offering.
Now, that number is presumably about 100 per cent — SDC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September, and then for Chapter 7 liquidation in January.
That’s worrying news for boss David Katzman, as well as anyone who still had/has one of the group’s aligners in their mouth .
2023 winner: Greg Maffei, Liberty Media
Greg Maffei was the Exodia of executive perquisites last year, with the Liberty Media mogul’s $1.2mn of aircraft usage split across four companies.
That’s hard to keep track of — so it’s no wonder that the group ended up practising the opposite of what it preaches with regards to managing its environmental impact (and at shareholders’ expense). Business is so tricky.
At least Liberty is apparently trying to make things better. From a December press release :
Liberty Media Corporation (“Liberty Media” or “Liberty”) (Nasdaq: LSXMA, LSXMB, LSXMK, FWONA, FWONK, LLYVA, LLYVK) and Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: SIRI) (“SiriusXM” or the “Company”), the leading audio entertainment company in North America, today announced that they have entered into definitive agreements whereby Liberty Media’s Liberty SiriusXM tracking stock group (Nasdaq: LSXMA, LSXMB and LSXMK) (collectively “LSXM”), will be combined with SiriusXM to create a new public company (“New SiriusXM”), which will continue to operate under the SiriusXM name and brand.
We’re told this will result in a “simplified ownership structure”, but have no idea what this mean for the climate crisis.
2023 Winner: LiveNation senior management
Losing an advisory vote is the corporate equivalent of getting a speeding ticket and being told that you can attend a speed awareness course instead of getting points and a fine. That is to say, it probably isn’t much of an initial deterrent, but might stop you doing the same thing again.
Anyway, it happened to ticketing behemoth LiveNation — mere days after last years’ Proxies, shareholders rejected its executive compensation, fairly narrowly, on an advisory basis . The exact reasons for each vote are unknowable, but maybe there some annoyance that its bosses were getting comped ticket while everyone else had to pay $?,???,??? to see T-Swizzle .
On that topic, LiveNation has subsequently been subpoenaed by the US Senate investigative subcommittee, the chair of which accused the company of “misuse of monopoly power” . Luckily for its fun-loving executives, the allegations aren’t true, according to, uh, Live Nation .
2023 Winner: Ben Kohn, Playboy
Attempting to live up to its name (and former reputation), Playboy bought a plane, and then had to sell it. It’s a tale nearly as old as planes.
Somehow, life went on, and it’s been an eventful period for the company. Earlier this month, it had to restate its results , and late last year warned it would not be able to file its annual report on time (possibly it had been planning to fly it to the SEC).
It was an unfortunate pair of stumbles after some big M&A news last year — in October, its Lovers adult retail stories and ecommerce operation was sold to Hustler, that other scuzzy pillar of American letters and images.
2023 Winner: Delek US
Reading back last year’s Proxies, we realise that we didn’t actually state how much money former chief executive Ezra Uzi Yemin was given to pay for professional tax advice in 2022. It was $25,000, as part of $12.4mn in total compensation he earned.
Unfortunately, this generous perk didn’t seem to solve all his issues. During 2023 , his first full calendar year in his new role as executive chair, the company paid Yemin a further $24,601 for professional tax preparation fees. Hey — at least it’s getting cheaper!
The difference, we note, is enough to buy four Premier TurboTax licences .