Expedia sure is a well-managed company whose products we all use every day, right? I mean, when you think of well-managed companies, nobody compares to Expedia. It’s the best! All CEOs should aspire to be worthy to just tie the shoes of the CEO of Expedia, and yet I’ll bet most readers can’t name him without searching.
I mention this because it turns out he is the highest-paid CEO in the Fortune 500. He received 2,897 times the median employee salary at Expedia, or $296.2 million.
Today I learned that Expedia also owns and operates a few other names you might recognize from the current decade: Hotels . com, Vrbo, Travelocity (yes, they bought their prime competitor some time ago), Hotwire, Orbitz, eBookers, CheapTickets, CarRentals . com, WotIf, and Trivago, so perhaps they’re doing a little better than your first thought might be.
My takeaway after learning this today is that I need to stop using Orbitz. I think I’ve used Kayak and Trip .com most recently anyway.
So maybe he gets just shy of 300 million because he’s figured out how to avoid triggering anti-trust investigators while eliminating competition via acquisition. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine how he’s doing any better job that someone paid 1/300th as much.
Almost 3000 times as much as the median employee of this company; it seems bizarre that this is even allowed.
Data comes from the AFL-CIO, chart from Genuine Impact.
@pwinn
It’s up to the board of directors and the stockholders. If the stockholders don’t like it, they can sell the stock. If employees don’t like it, they can work somewhere else.
I don’t see why anyone who is not connected with the company in some way would even care.