CEO不值那么多钱

The stinging rebuke from WPP’s shareholders to Sir Martin Sorrell, its founder and chief executive, marks a turning point in how investors treat company bosses who demand spectacular amounts of money. Or, if not, it should.

WPP股东对该集团创始人、首席执行官苏铭天爵士(Sir Martin Sorrell)发出的尖刻责难，标志着投资者该如何对待要求巨额薪酬的公司老板这一问题迎来了一个转折点。或者，如果事实不是这样的话，从道理上说也应该如此。

The old problem for shareholders was entrenched managers: executives who enjoyed a comfortable life and delivered mediocre returns protected by complacent boards. The solution was to pile on share options, long-term incentive plans and golden parachutes – the panoply of equity-based rewards designed to make chief executives think like investors.

地位牢固的管理者对股东来说是个老问题：这些高管们过着惬意的生活，创造的回报平平，但这样的成绩却受到自满的董事会的维护。在过去，解决方法是推出一系列股票期权、长期激励计划以及金降落伞政策——这一整套基于股票的报酬旨在让首席执行官像投资者那样思考。

In some ways, the 1990s revolution worked as intended. It opened the market for corporate control – the need for hostile bids faded – and it produced a new generation of well-trained, energetic and highly rewarded executives.

从某种程度而言，上世纪90年代的那场革命达到了预期效果。它为企业控制权打开了市场——敌意收购的必要性减弱，并缔造了新一代受过良好教育、精力充沛且报酬不菲的高管。

Like Frankenstein’s experiment, it also created a monster.

与弗兰肯斯坦(Frankenstein)的实验一样，它也创造了一个怪物。

No offence to Sir Martin, who embodies that generation’s virtues as well as its vice. He founded WPP 27 years ago with a ￡250,000 loan and has piled up a stake of ￡140m in his ￡10bn company by being paid handsomely in shares and cash, and reinvesting in equity.

这里一点也没有冒犯苏铭天爵士的意思，他代表着那一代人的美德和罪恶。27年前，他用25万美元贷款创建了WPP，他获得了丰厚的股票和现金，并将它们再次投资于股票，由此积累了这家市值100亿英镑的公司的1.40亿英镑股份。

Yet someone else always appears to be doing better. Sir Martin gazes unhappily across the Atlantic at John Wren, chief executive of Omnicom, who escaped criticism from his US investors despite his $15.4m remuneration last year. Others mutter that they might as well give up and work in private equity, where they could earn real money away from scrutiny.

然而，别人得到的似乎总是比自己多。苏铭天爵士不满的将目光越过大西洋投向宏盟集团(Omnicom)的首席执行官庄任(John Wren)，庄任去年获得1540万美元薪酬，却躲过了其美国投资者的批评。其他人抱怨称，他们不妨辞职投身私人股本公司，这样他们赚到的钱就不会受到监督了。

Their refrain is that they must be paid a lot because otherwise they will slack off, fiduciary duty be damned. “If you want a good CEO, you have to pay for it, argued Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive of Glencore, the mining group, last week. Companies that pay less get “caretaker managers.

他们抱怨称，他们必须得到高薪，因为如果不这样的话，他们在工作中会变得消极，受托责任也将注定消弭。矿业集团嘉能可(Glencore)首席执行官伊凡·格拉森伯格(Ivan Glasenberg)最近辩称：“如果你希望得到一位优秀的CEO，你必须为此付出代价。不愿付出高薪的企业得到的将是“看守经理人(caretaker managers)。

This is self-serving: what is the chance that Sir Martin would have left WPP or gone home early on Fridays if he had been paid ￡3m rather than ￡6.8m? Zero, I imagine. He values things other than lucre, as everyone does – pride in his creation, pleasure in dealmaking, the public spotlight. He’s only human.

这是一种自私的想法：如果苏铭天爵士的年薪是300万英镑而非680万英镑，那么他离开WPP或者在每个周五提前回家的几率会有多大？我想，答案是零。除了金钱，他还看重其他东西，就像所有人那样——创建企业的自豪感、做成交易的快乐、公众的关注。他只是一个人。

The problem is that every CEO – even one who gains ￡4.2m in equity dividends each year, as Sir Martin does – wants at least as much as his or her peers as a matter of self-respect. The others in turn demand the same privilege, like an Escher drawing in which everyone ascends an unending staircase.

问题是，出于自尊，所有CEO——甚至那些每年获得420万英镑股票分红的人，例如苏铭天爵士——都希望自己的薪酬至少与他或她的同行类似。其他人也希望获得同样的特权，就像埃舍尔(Escher)的那副画作：所有人都在攀登一段永无尽头的楼梯。

They were trained into it by the investors who are now unhappy at the result. To incentivise them as shareholders wanted – to “align their interests – they were offered big rewards, much of it in the form of options or long-term equity handouts for outperforming others.

如今对这一结果表示不满的那些投资者把他们训练成了这个样子。为了像股东希望的那样激励他们——使高管和股东“利益一致——高管们获得了巨额报酬，其中很大一部分是期权或长期发放股票的形式，作为他们的业绩超过其他人的报酬。

Any chief executive will say this is the market at work – the demand for qualified and experienced CEOs is high and the supply is low. But it is a very strange market: excluding those with the potential to become leaders and including only the incumbents distorts prices.

任何一位首席执行官都会说，这就是市场的作用——对合格且有经验的CEO的需求旺盛，但供应较少。但这个市场非常奇怪：将那些具有领导潜力的人排除在外，只留下那些扭曲市场价格的在职CEO。

It has caused the ratcheting up of CEO pay over two decades to the point where millions are the norm and those paid less than tens of millions feel cheated. The median pay of FTSE 100 CEOs rose 10 per cent last year, according to Manifest/MM and K,?the advisory groups.

这导致的结果是，过去20年，CEO的薪资不断提高，达到了这样一种水平：数百万美元属于家常便饭，那些没有得到数千万美元的CEO会觉得自己吃亏了。根据咨询机构Manifest和MM and K的数据，去年，富时100(FTSE 100)成分股企业CEO的薪资中值上涨10%。

Meanwhile, investor returns have been uninspiring – the 10-year total return of the FTSE 100 is 5.5 per cent a year, with WPP at 5.4 per cent. As one investor puts it: “We have suffered pretty dismal returns and we want more performance for the amount we’re paying.

与此同时，投资者回报一直不见起色，富时100成分股企业10年来的总回报率为每年5.5%，WPP为5.4%。正如一位投资者所言：“我们的回报率非常可怜，我们希望我们付出的数额可以换来更好的表现。

When will the pay ratchet cease? Logically, never. It will keep going until shareholders become seriously diluted by the amount of shares they are handing to chief executives to do their jobs. Sir Martin took a quarter of a century to gain his 1.4 per cent of WPP. This generation will acquire more equity, faster.

薪资上涨的趋势将何时结束？从逻辑上来说，永远不会。薪资将持续上涨，直到股东权益因为他们送给CEO（以尽他们的本分）的股票数量而遭到严重稀释。苏铭天爵士用25年的时间，获得了WPP 1.4%的股份。这一代人获得的股份将更多，速度将更快。

“I thought that was the object of the exercise, to behave like an owner and an entrepreneur and not a bureaucrat, Sir Martin wrote in the FT last week. He is right; it was. But investors should have been careful about what they wished for.

苏铭天爵士最近在英国《金融时报》上撰文称：“我认为，这种做法的目的是：像一位所有者和企业家那样行事，而不是像官僚那样。他是对的；以前是这样。但投资者对于他们的愿望本应保持谨慎。

Sir Martin also complained that debate had moved from “payment for performance to what is fair pay, as if politicians have sullied things. There, he is wrong. CEOs’ notions of what is “fair – that they ought to be paid as much as their rivals – led to the rampant inflation of remuneration. If efficiency were the only consideration, the outcome would be different.

苏铭天爵士还抱怨称，辩论已从“绩效薪资转向什么是公平薪资，好像政治家们破坏了这些。在这个问题上，他错了。CEO的“公平理念——他们的薪资应该与竞争对手一样高——造成了薪酬普遍上涨。如果效率是唯一的考量的话，结果将是不同的。

As a PwC study of 1,100 executives found this year, most prefer simple, schemes and discount the value of long-term incentive plans – to the point where the amounts must be huge to affect motivation. “We need to consign to the scrapheap the agency model approach to executive pay, based on ‘rational economic man’, it concluded.

正如今年普华永道(PwC)对1100名高管的调查所发现的那样，多数受访者青睐于简单的计划，而不太相信长期激励计划的价值，认为数额必须大到足以影响动机才有用。调查总结称：“根据‘理性经济人’理论，我们需要把解决高管薪资问题的代理模式扔进垃圾桶。

Shareholders would get as much value in terms of motivation if everyone at the top were paid half the amount (as they were a few years ago). In economic terms, it would be more efficient – the absolute level of reward common at the top of public companies is becoming an impediment.

从动力方面来说，如果所有高层管理者的薪资都减半（与几年前一样），股东们将获得同样的价值。从经济的角度来说，这将变得更高效——上市公司高层普遍存在的薪资绝对水平正变成一种障碍。

It may be logical for individual companies and remuneration committees to cough up multimillion rewards to executives. For public companies as a whole, and investors, it brings poor returns.

个别公司和薪酬委员会向高管支付数百万美元薪酬的做法，或许是合理的。但对上市公司整体来说，对投资者来说，这带来了糟糕的回报。

“If you reduce my remuneration, then I’ll leave and work in private equity, or in the US, or in China or Brazil, every chief executive would protest. “Fair enough. Do so, should be the shareholders’ response. Some would indeed leave, freeing up places for the executives jostling one level below them, and others would find that money isn’t everything and stay where they are.

所有CEO都会这样抗议：“如果你降低我的薪酬，我就离职，跳槽到私人股本公司，或者去美国、中国或巴西工作。股东的回应应该是：“说得对。就这样做吧。一些人确实会离开，这会为那些争夺低一级职位的高管们腾出位置，其他人会认为金钱并非一切，他们会留任。

That would be a free market.

这将变成一个自由市常