Busted VW ceo says, "I want my money!'

This takes hubris to a whole other level.
Martin Winterkorn, the VW ceo who resigned last week in shame is demanding he be paid through next year.
His salary last year was 16 million euros, the most of any european exec.
Ya gotta admire this guy's chutzpa.

Depending on the details of his employment contract, he may very well have a case, even in cases of malfeasance. Chutzpah as little to do with it. Nobody at that level of employment works as an "at will" employee. It's all according to contract.

He got the German government to go along with the malfeasance; per car, it's only a few dollars, so he was probably well worth what they paid for him.

GoFuckYourself said:

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Someone needs to cut his balls off.

For not being a moron?

It might help if I could type.

Oh I get that your upset, I am to. But as hogan points out you don't get to play the game at that level if you can't cover your ass. If I were VW right now I'd be frantically looking to see if there is a case for negating the contract because of his actions. This isn't like the banks a few years back where at the end of the day they could plausibly hide behind 'oops I didn't think this would happen!' this looks to possibly be illegal and certainly wasn't a design flaw.

Greedy Rich Fuck.

pensivepoet said:

This takes hubris to a whole other level.
Martin Winterkorn, the VW ceo who resigned last week in shame is demanding he be paid through next year.
His salary last year was 16 million euros, the most of any european exec.
Ya gotta admire this guy's chutzpa.

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No different than Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein getting billions so they could pay out their bonuses despite their incompetence and almost bringing down the national economy.

Or Carly Fiorina receiving a multi-million dollar severance package despite cutting HP stock in half and nearly destroying every part of the company.

You are old enough to know the rules don't apply to such people. They can be as ineffective, incompetence and incoherent as they want and they'll still get rewarded. Competency doesn't matter. Only who you know.

someoneyouknow said:

No different than Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein getting billions so they could pay out their bonuses despite their incompetence and almost bringing down the national economy.

Or Carly Fiorina receiving a multi-million dollar severance package despite cutting HP stock in half and nearly destroying every part of the company.

You are old enough to know the rules don't apply to such people. They can be as ineffective, incompetence and incoherent as they want and they'll still get rewarded. Competency doesn't matter. Only who you know.

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As Hogan pointed out, it's their contract. Same as in professional sports. If someone signs a multi-million dollar contract and then stinks up the field they still get paid.

SgtSpiderMan said:

As Hogan pointed out, it's their contract. Same as in professional sports. If someone signs a multi-million dollar contract and then stinks up the field they still get paid.

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Not always. The Yankees didn't pay Rodriguez his $6 million bonus after his drug use. Granted, he still got paid his salary, but he didn't get his bonus even after making the home run record.

Regardless, my point still stands. It's a whole other world compared to us peons. Incompetence doesn't exist in the rarefied atmosphere of the C room, no matter how poorly the company is run

Which is funny because companies continually whine about being pressured to raise the salaries of their employees yet study after study has shown the person at the top has effectively no bearing on how well a company does:

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00123?gko=2aaf2

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/19/executive-pay-ceos-dont-need-cash

So if the company is truly worried about saving money by not raising employee salaries, they could save millions by not paying their CEOs so much. But then that would mean using common sense. However, based on reality, we can see common sense doesn't enter into the picture. It's better to waste stockholder money on incompetence than it is to make your company better.

someoneyouknow said:

Not always. The Yankees didn't pay Rodriguez his $6 million bonus after his drug use. Granted, he still got paid his salary, but he didn't get his bonus even after making the home run record.

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I grantee you there is a drug use clause in that contract.....

someoneyouknow said:

Regardless, my point still stands. It's a whole other world compared to us peons. Incompetence doesn't exist in the rarefied atmosphere of the C room, no matter how poorly the company is run

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It is...even when they totally crash their company and they have to get congress to bail them out and they are forced to resign.....they still get like 40 million dollar bonuses on their way out and shit. LOL insanity...

Sean Renaud said:

Oh I get that your upset, I am to. But as hogan points out you don't get to play the game at that level if you can't cover your ass. If I were VW right now I'd be frantically looking to see if there is a case for negating the contract because of his actions. This isn't like the banks a few years back where at the end of the day they could plausibly hide behind 'oops I didn't think this would happen!' this looks to possibly be illegal and certainly wasn't a design flaw.

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There is also the issue of what, if anything, he knew of the deception. It's one thing to sign off on an act of fraud and try to hide it at the highest corporate level. It is another thing to create an atmosphere where middle and upper management have to cheat in order to meet your unreasonable production and sales numbers in order to keep the stock price high. Even if you don't know what they did, you directly contributed to the problem that resulted.

But it is an entirely different deal if loose cannons take it upon themselves to cut corners and make themselves look good via their own corrupt motivations. There are different levels of culpability here depending on the hard facts of who knew what when.

Agreed. I did make my statement on the assumption that he knew.

I admittedly don't know much about European or German politics right now. In the US from a purely PR standpoint I would be frantically trying to find a way to punish this guy and very visibly. I mean up to an including making a very public spectacle of him and then hooking him up on the DL later. Regardless of if it would truly accomplish anything I think it's obvious the American public really, really wants to see a few fat cats pilloried.