Tis the season for Annual Shareholder Meetings! Public companies across the country are filing official SEC forms to comply with securities regulations and you (yes you!) can go find out how much your executive team makes in their ivory towers! All publicly traded companies must report executive compensation and the best place I've found to get this is through the company's Proxy Statement from their Annual Shareholder Meeting. Finding it just takes like 4 clicks of your mouse.
https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/executive-compensation
This Proxy Statement must be submitted to the SEC and they have an easy way to find it using their EDGAR search tool, which can be found here: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
Type in the stock ticker of the company in the search field (make sure to use ALL CAPS). If you don't know the stock ticker, just google “COMPANY stock” and look for the ticker symbol here:
oof what a roller coaster today
Next, expand the menu bar that says “Proxy (annual meeting) and information statements” and look for the most recent DEF 14A document. Click on it to open.
You'll be taken to the entire SCHEDULE 14A filing which is mostly boring, regulatory stuff.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/27419/000130817921000258/ltgt2021_def14a.htm
Scroll down a few pages until you get to the Table of Contents. Here, you want to look for something like “(Summary) Compensation Tables” or “Executive Compensation Table.” Click on it.
NOTE: Director Compensation is for their Board of Directors. Also super helpful information to see how much they are paying their Board to sit around a giant mahogany table eating catered lunches and laughing at how much more they make than you. Target pays their board members about $300,000 per year to do this.
This will take you to the total compensation for the C-Suite execs. This includes base salary, stock, bonuses, and other compensation.
Here we can see how much Mr Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target, made in the last couple years. In 2019, he got a $15k raise and $3.6M in stock. Those of you working at Target, how much stock did you get in 2019? None? I figured as much. We also see that in 2020, he got a total raise of over $816,000.
Let's look at another one for Kohls. I searched for their ticker symbol (KSS) in EDGAR and clicked on PREC 14A which is a preliminary filing from just yesterday. Their Compensation Table was a bit harder to find (use 'ctrl + f' if you need to) but it's there.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000885639/000130817922000038/lkss2022_prec14a.htm
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000885639/000130817922000038/lkss2022_prec14a.htm#lkssa041
Here we see that Ms Michelle Gass got a 17% raise in 2021! Congrats, Michelle! That puts her at a salary of $1,467,750. Ooh, she also got a performance based incentive of ALMOST 4 MILLION DOLLARS. Those of you working at Khols, were you told there was no money for a raise? No money for a bonus? Cause Michelle got a pretty frikkin decent raise and bonus.
Ok this is fun! Let's do one more for Best Buy!
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/764478/000114036121015963/nc10018363x1_def14a.htm
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/764478/000114036121015963/nc10018363x1_def14a.htm#t56
Ooh. Hmmm… Mr Barry took a paycut in 2021. Probably because of the pandemic and decreased sales. But he still got $2,320,000 through Best Buy's incentive plan!! Hell yeah, Mr Barry! That dude is killing it. He must be working like 80X harder than the shmucks on the sales floor to justify that salary. Pick yourselves up by your boot straps, Geek Squaders!
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Please use this information in your next performance review to discuss how the company decides to spend its money, especially when your boss tells you that there isn't any money for raises this year when that is absolute bullshit.
Yes, I understand that your boss probably isn't the person who decides how much money there is for raises and doesn't decide how much the CEO makes.
BUT
You can demand answers and hold your boss accountable. Make him ask his boss. Make her ask her boss. I wouldn't be surprised if your boss wasn't even aware of how much the executives were making and the huge disparity between your salaries and C-Suite salaries.