INVESTOR SERVICE
Can you keep a SECret? Edgar Online - the once staid site that investors go to for the latest IPO filings, annual reports, and insider trades - just got a hell of a lot juicier. No longer can executives bury their perks inside voluminous filings, thanks to a recently added enhancement that allows users to search by name. "There's great potential for voyeurism," says Jay Sears, Edgar Online's VP of marketing. "You can find the information people want to hide." And that's what we did at www.edgar-online.com/people. In digging through the documents that companies are required to file with the SEC, Wired found answers to questions Robert Pittman, Walter Forbes, Carol Bartz, and Larry Ellison would rather we not ask.
Is it true that flying first-class isn't good enough for today's execs?
Apparently yes - at least not good enough for America Online COO Robert Pittman, who has an employment agreement that grants him the right to pilot a private aircraft to work obligations at his discretion. According to Edgar Online, "The company has agreed to reimburse Mr. Pittman for flight hours and use of a copilot if he determines the use of his private aircraft is the easiest and safest method of travel for company business." You can't help wonder whether AOL board member Colin Powell is a certified copilot.
What does $48,791,205 buy?
Former Cendant chair Walter Forbes's resignation. His golden parachute breaks down as: $25 million in cash, $12.5 million in stock options, $538,000 in insurance premium coverage, $10 million in retirement benefits, and a prorated salary of $753,205. Of course, the accounting scandal that precipitated Forbes's flight also cost Cendant nearly 80 percent of its market value.
How do CEOs moonlight?
They become professional board members. Case in point - Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz. Bartz sits on six boards, for which she is paid $127,000 in cash. Not bad for 37 days of work a year (and this ain't no eight-hour day). Then there are stock options. Tallying up her current stock holdings for the companies on whose boards she sits, you get about $76 million, although that figure includes shares from her day job. All of this makes her $1 million annual salary at Autodesk seem like chump change.
What companies does Oracle do business with?
Whichever ones are in Larry Ellison's portfolio. In 1998, Oracle agreed to purchase $578,000 worth of equipment from nCUBE, struck up an agreement with MindQ to resell software, and spent $472,980 for the use of aircraft from Tentacle. Needless to say, Ellison owns controlling interests in nCUBE, MindQ, and Tentacle.
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