Porsche CEO’s $100 Million Pay Irks Workers

On Saturday night after we got back from our favorite restaurant, Apollo Grill, I got a chance to finish reading the Weekend WSJ, and found a story about Porsche. The headline referred to the $100 million that their CEO Wendelin Wiedeking took home for a year’s pay. That’s making big headlines in Germany, where excessive pay is not looked on kindly. This is compounded by the fact that the same man has made many statements castigating companies for putting shareholders’ interests before those of workers. Ironically, Wiedeking’s King Midas compensation all comes from Hedge-fund like operations.

You see, Porsche made more money trading derivatives than it did from selling cars in 2007. The management board in charge of these brilliant market moves is headed by their CEO, and it is his performance-related incentives that pushed his pay into the stratosphere.

In Germany, ordinary working-stiffs have not seen pay increases in many years, according to the story by Stephen Power, and with Porsche now owing 31 percent of VW, many of them are afraid that big cost cuts are about to come down at this company. Some industry analysts claim that the sports car maker is now itself acting like a hedge fund, which is Germany, isn’t a good thing at all.