JPMorgan Chase (JPM) released a 132-page report on Jan. 16 that detailed the “London Whale” story surrounding a $2 billion investment fiasco. On the same day the New York financial services firm said its board approved compensating CEO Jamie Dimon $11.5 million for his work in 2012, or around half as much as in the prior year, taking into consideration both the continued strong performance of JPMorgan as well as its recent investment losses, including Mr. Dimon’s responsibility as CEO.

We noted on January 15 that several of the independent directors on JPMorgan’s board have supervised Mr. Dimon for many years. They also earned as much compensation in exchange for their services as some bank employees do. The following is a round-up of media commentary about the board’s recent decision:

“The pay cut was actually a message from the board to regulators and worried investors that it was a strong watchdog over the nation’s largest bank, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.” The New York Times.

“JPMorgan has gone soft on Jamie Dimon over the so-called whale trade. . . The more than $10 million docked from Dimon’s pay will sting, but the board could do more – like removing one of his hats.” Reuters Breakingviews.

JPMorgan said “employees were overwhelmed by the complexity of their bets, risk managers were ill-equipped and leaders including Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon weren’t aggressive enough in responding. . . (Michael) Cavanagh, who has worked with or for Dimon since 1993, led the management task force that produced the report. Dimon promoted him from chief financial officer to run the treasury and security services division in June 2010, and again last July to co-head the corporate and investment bank. . .Joe Evangelisti, a spokesman for the bank, said Cavanagh answered to the independent committee of the board, which also conducted its own review.” Bloomberg

“First and foremost, profits rose 53% to $5.7 billion. Revenue was in line with expectations. To no lesser degree: the self-examination stemming from the “London whale” trading debacle seems to be having the desired effect. . .That is: Chief Executive Jamie Dimon appears safe.” Marketwatch

“The problem isn’t that the report is incomplete, lacks analysis or fails to hold people responsible for the mess. . .Given how badly the trade went, it is amazing how right the response by the New York company has been, at least by Wall Street standards.” The Wall Street Journal

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Several directors who are reportedly reviewing federal orders that JPMorgan Chase (JPM) fix its risk management have supervised the New York financial services firm’s CEO Jamie Dimon for many years. They also earned as much compensation in exchange for their services as some bank employees do.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued cease and desist orders on January 14, noting the need to make improvements in areas such as anti-money laundering compliance. The development follows Mr. Dimon’s disclosure to the media that his company made a “terrible, egregious” trading mistake that cost $2 billion. J.P. Morgan’s board is scheduled to review the internal report at a meeting this Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal said.

Most of the people tasked with holding Mr. Dimon accountable for his mistakes have known him for years. The chair of JPMorgan’s risk policy committee, James S. Crown, is among those most familiar with the firm. From 1991 to 2004, the president of the investment firm Henry Crown & Co. was a director at Bank One Corp., where Mr. Dimon had been CEO starting in March 2000 until the Chicago bank merged with JPMorgan in July 2004. Mr. Crown has remained a director at JPMorgan since then.

Laban P. Jackson, the CEO of the real estate development firm Clear Creek Properties, Inc., also came over to JPMorgan in 2004 after having served as a director at Bank One starting in 1993. He’s the audit committee chair.

And Lee R. Raymond, the retired CEO of the oil and gas company Exxon Mobil Corp., has been a director at JPMorgan since 2001 after an earlier stint between 1987 and 2000. He’s the chair of JPMorgan’s compensation, management & development committee as well as a member of the corporate governance & nominating committee.

Another familiar face is Ellen Futter, the president and trustee of the American Museum of Natural History. She has been a director on J.P. Morgan’s board since 2001 after an earlier stint between 1997 and 2000, according to the company’s most recent proxy filing. She is a member on both the bank’s public responsibility and the risk policy committees.

In 2011, each non-management director at JPMorgan received an annual cash retainer of $75,000 and an annual grant, made when annual employee incentive compensation was paid, of deferred stock units valued at $170,000 on the date of grant. The board said it “believes it is desirable” that a significant portion of director compensation be linked to the firm’s stock.

J.P. Morgan also said in its proxy filing that its board has reviewed the relationships between the firm and each director, and determined that each has “only immaterial relationships” and accordingly each is an independent director under New York Stock Exchange corporate governance listing standards.

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An edited version of this op-ed appeared on Bloomberg View on October 3, 2012 and this version appeared today on my blog on Forbes.com

It was announced in the FT today that the Financial Services Authority expects banks to reduce or clawback bonuses in British banks and non-U.K. banks with operations in London as a result of the series of scandals that have wrought the industry during 2012. Such an announcement could not have come at a more opportune time.

But why haven’t banks been taking such actions already? The financial crisis happened in 2008. How many cash bonuses and equity awards have been clawed back from the banking executives who caused the crisis? None, that I can ascertain from required financial disclosures.

Of course some executives experienced the ultimate clawback: losing their job and watching their unvested and unexercised stock vanish to bankruptcy, creditors, and/or worthlessness. But what about all the cash bonuses and stock that had already been paid out for illusory earnings and revenues based on valueless investments? Little or nothing has been recouped.

So what can we expect of the latest round of bank value destruction and scandals, from  JPMorgan’s London trading losses to Barclays’ Libor manipulation to HSBC’s money laundering and mis-selling of payment protection and interest-rate insurance to Standard Chartered’s Iran dealings?

Again, some have paid the price with their job. Barclays’ CEO Bob Diamond and JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew both resigned as a direct result of the events that brought losses or scandal or both to their respective employers. As a result, both also lost a significant amount of future compensation because of their terminations. But neither has had existing compensation clawed back. Thus far, based on the absence of filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission, not a single senior executive in the U.S. has had to return compensation that has already been paid out as a result of violating codes of ethics codes, behavior that regulators judged to be illegal, or excessively risky behavior. Certainly no one has had to relinquish compensation for simple immorality.

Not all the CEOs and executives who might be considered the buck, as in “the buck stops here,” have left their companies. Peter Sands remains the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank. James Dimon not only remains the CEO of JPMorgan, but successfully resisted attempts earlier this year to strip him of his chairmanship.

On the other hand, at HSBC, the current CEO took over in 2011. This was after the period during which, according to the Senate investigation, the bank was laundering money. But, with 30 years international experience at HSBC, of late at very senior levels, and a member of the parent company board since 2008, it is not credible that Stuart Gulliver can escape blame, though the previous CEO Lord Green, currently the Trade Minister in an increasingly scandal-ridden Conservative cabinet, is yet more culpable.

Given the current crop of scandals, it seems clear a simple expectation that the exercise of moral decency would prevent illegal activity is futile. Nor does increased internal and external oversight and regulation appear to have decreased the level of risky or illegal behavior in banks. Thank goodness we have been relieved by the election from the possibility that a potential Republican administration might have rolled back oversight and regulation rather than increase its enforcement. Indeed, President Obama, interviewed in Rolling Stone, has indicated that curtailing Wall Street incentives for risky behavior is one of his priorities during the next term of office.

According to a survey by whistleblower protection law firm Labaton Sucharov, 81 percent of Americans do not believe the government has done enough to stop corporate wrongdoing. Clearly the electorate believes the current level of oversight to be inadequate or at best inadequately enforced.

In fact, there is a widespread belief that the only way overly risky or illegal behavior can effectively be checked is for it to affect executives’ paychecks. At many institutions, clawbacks only come into play when there has been a financial restatement. Why? Yes, the actions that led to the financial crisis did not lead to restatements, far worse, they led to massive, and, in some cases, permanent , destruction of value. But because there were no restatements – though arguably there should have been – no incentives have been recouped.

Actions such as selling credit default swaps based on rotten loans, money laundering, interest rate manipulation, and excessive risk-taking can be as objectively determined as financial restatements. Therefore there is absolutely no reason why they should not also be added to the list of behaviors that might cause a clawback. Furthermore, such recoupment should not only apply to those with direct responsibility for or direct knowledge of illegal or other such actions.

Clawback provisions, which have been common in the U.K. since 2009, were mandated in the U.S. by the Dodd-Frank Act, though the SEC has yet to implement this part of the law. Nevertheless, many U.S. companies have voluntarily adopted them, though most apply only in the event of a financial restatement. The best of these require pay to be returned whether the executive was directly responsible for the accounting fraud that led to a restatement or not. This is because any bonuses and equity incentives will have been artificially inflated in value because of fraudulent financials. In the same way, whether executives knew about the money laundering or rate manipulation, such illegal behavior should result in the return of incentives by any member of senior management who was in post when it happened. Ultimate responsibility for wrongdoing of this magnitude lies at the top of an organization because, even without direct complicity, it occurred due to a lack of management oversight. The same might also be claimed of the board.

The behavior of the executives involved, the lack of oversight or the clear evidence of complicity, would seem to indicate that the current provisions the banks have to recoup pay are ineffective, insufficient or nonexistent. This isn’t so. Though compensation hasn’t been recouped, all the banks involved – even JPMorgan, which has looser governance standards than European banks – say they can take back or cancel incentives in the event of illegal or damaging behavior of one kind or another.

For example, at Standard Chartered most incentive compensation is deferred and subject to recoupment: “if an individual exhibits inappropriate values or behaviour” or “if there is a material event including … breach of regulatory guidelines or failure in risk management at a Group or business level.” At HSBC, compensation can be clawed back for “non-compliance with Risk and Compliance procedures and expected behaviour” though the bank does not define what these behaviors are in its annual report. Barclays lists a set of events that may lead to clawbacks, including: “employee misconduct, harm to Barclays reputation.” They can also be applied “where an employee is under investigation for a regulatory or disciplinary matter.” At JPMorgan, with the US bank typically lagging behind European governance standards, only equity awards are subject to any kind of recoupment for “material financial or reputational harm to the Firm or its business activities.”

With all of this in place, why are we still waiting for significant clawbacks to be announced for employees directly involved in risky behavior and illegal activity, as well as for the managers supervising them? In each of these cases there has been clear violation.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) is considering bonus cuts for senior managers, including CEO Jamie Dimon. Though details are few, JPM’s board is expected to slash executive bonuses in an about face on executive compensation following an estimated $5.8 billion in credit derivative trade losses this year. The compensation committee certainly won’t have to fiddle with current performance metrics to reduce bonuses. Bonuses at JPMorgan are at the discretion of the compensation committee, averaging $4.4 million per named executive officer in 2011 and $4.7 million the year before.

Citigroup meanwhile is grappling with how to improve pay practices following its surprising advisory pay vote failure in April. At the time, board chairman Dick Parsons called the rejection a “serious matter” and pledged to actively counsel with key shareholders on compensation policy. Following the failed vote, the board has hired a new compensation consultant and looks to win “broader support among investors”, according to the Journal.  Similar to compensation at JPMorgan, executive pay at Citigroup is determined largely on the compensation committee’s assessment of discretionary elements.

Truth be told, neither of these banks has been eager to hold pay to any meaningful performance standard. For instance, each year, executives at JPMorgan receive bonuses with tidy rounded figures ending in a lot of zeroes, a sure sign for discretionary bonuses. The company does not even disclose a category for Non-Equity Incentive Compensation, the bonus category based on pre-determined performance metrics, because at JPMorgan, there are no pre-determined performance metrics. For compensation year 2011, the bonus for CEO Jamie Dimon was based on “continued leadership and several financial metrics”. Monday-morning quarterbacking financial metrics which happened to improve isn’t good enough. For those non-U.S. readers, Monday-morning quarterbacking is a reference to rewarding with the benefit of hindsight rather than sticking to a pre-determined reward system.

Equity granted to NEO’s at JPMorgan in fiscal 2011 consisted of stock appreciation rights and restricted stock units that vest ratably over time. These awards amounted to an even $17 million in grant date value for the CEO in 2011 alone. For 2012, the company added protection-based vesting conditions to equity awards. In accordance, half of RSU’s scheduled to vest in 2015 will be cancelled if the company does not meet a 15% Cumulative Return on Tangible Common Equity over the period 2012, 2013 and 2014. Also to its credit, JP Morgan has long-standing recovery provisions for incentive compensation. Recovery of incentive awards for “appropriate circumstances” is permitted and the company is expected to clawback millions from executives at the heart of the trading disaster.

In addition to its failed Say on Pay vote, Citigroup failed a spring stress test used to determine whether America’s largest financial institutions could survive another sever economic downturn. The stress test failure came just a month after Citigroup and four other U.S. banks agreed to pay U.S. government $25B to end an investigation into abusive foreclosure practices in connection with the collapse of the housing bubble. In the wake of recent upheaval, you’d think the company would be eager to appease shareholders with some governance improvements.

However, following a release from TARP restrictions in 2011, CEO Vikram Pandit’s base salary was soon increased to $1.75 million, or 75% over the IRC tax deductibility limit. Additionally, he received an aggregate mega-grant of 500,000 time-vesting stock options valued at more than $7.8 million in fiscal 2011. Citigroup does have some performance conditions attached to its most recent equity grants but they are discretionary. Deferred stock awards granted to Mr. Pandit scheduled to vest in 2013, 2014, 2015, will only vest if the compensation committee is satisfied with regulatory considerations, organizational culture, and talent development.

The post JPMorgan and Citigroup to “rethink” Executive Compensation appeared first on GMI Ratings.

Barclays’ CEO Bob Diamond has followed the lead of independent chairman Marcus Agius and announced his resignation today, though according to press reports he has done so under protest and with less altruism than Mr. Agius. Interestingly, Mr. Agius is leading the search for a replacement CEO, and it will be interesting to see if the bank has in place an effective succession plan or whether the recent controversies surrounding the bank will cause it to look elsewhere for a candidate potentially less sullied by the bank’s recent activities.

As I noted about Mr. Agius’ resignation yesterday, these acknowledgements of responsibility are rare among U.S. banking chairmen and CEOs, most often the same person. This is perhaps associated with the relative strength of bank boards in the U.K. versus the U.S. For example, GMI Ratings’ ESG (environmental, social, governance) rating for Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs is “F”, in part driven by our poor opinion of the boards at these banks. In contrast, our rating for Barclays is “C”, as it is for HSBC, the other major international U.K. based bank. While strong boards cannot always be held responsible for operational misbehavior, they can at least be expected to act properly when such behavior is detected.

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Dimon in the Rough, Part 2

Events Team Leader Mark Magee and Compensation Analyst Ashley Kotzur found these quotations for the second edition of Dimon in the Rough here and here from first day of testimony on June 13th.

“While this does not reduce the losses already incurred and does not preclude future losses, it does reduce the probability and magnitude of future losses,” he said.

“While we can never say we won’t make mistakes—in fact, we know we will—we do believe this to be an isolated event,” he said.

“We became complacent,” Dimon said. “Never, ever get complacent.”

“I don’t know what the Volcker rule is. It hasn’t been written yet.”

He’s also recorded as saying that: the losses occurred because traders were poorly managed and did not understand what they were doing.

Hardly a recommendation for the bank. It’s not often you get to see a CEO squirm. And it’s interesting to see how many admissions he began with a qualifying clause.

Corporate Justice

Events Analyst Dovid Muyderman found this example of corporate justice in an 8-K filing from Orthofix on July 7th.

On June 6, 2012, Orthofix International N.V. (the “Company”) entered into a settlement agreement (the “BGS Settlement Agreement”) with the United States of America, acting through the United States Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) and on behalf of the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (the “OIG-HHS”), the TRICARE Management Activity, through its General Counsel, the Office of Personnel Management, in its capacity as administrator of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the United States Department of Veteran Affairs and relator Jeffrey J. Bierman. The BGS Settlement Agreement finally resolves (i) the previously disclosed government investigation surrounding the HIPAA subpoenas issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts (the “Boston USAO”) on April 10, 2009, July 23, 2009 and June 3, 2010, respectively, and (ii) the previously disclosed qui tam complaint filed by Jeffrey J. Bierman in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the Company and Orthofix Inc. In connection with the BGS Settlement Agreement, the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Orthofix Inc., entered into a plea agreement with the Boston USAO and the DOJ (the “Plea Agreement”) on June 7, 2012 under which Orthofix Inc. will plead guilty to one felony count of obstruction of a federal audit (§18 U.S.C. 1516). The Plea Agreement is subject to approval by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Under the BGS Settlement Agreement, the Company will pay $34,234,263 (plus interest at a rate of 3% from May 5, 2011 through the day before payment is made). Under the Plea Agreement, Orthofix Inc. will pay (i) a criminal fine of $7,765,737, and (ii) a mandatory special assessment of $400. The Company previously recorded a charge of $43 million during the first quarter of 2011 in anticipation of the settlement and related fees owed to counsel for Mr. Bierman.

That’s an awful lot of bodies on the prosecution side, a monstrous list. But what’s that $400 about?

Like Fagin, from ‘Oliver’, Farmer Mac is Reviewing… the situation

Dovid also found this somewhat embarrassing situation for Farmer Mac in an 8-K from June 6th.

On June 6, 2012, the Corporate Governance Committee and the Board of Directors of the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (“Farmer Mac”) reconsidered their April 5, 2012 independence determinations and determined that director nominees Thomas W. Hill and Douglas E. Wilhelm would not be “independent” directors under Farmer Mac’s Corporate Governance Guidelines upon their election to the Board, and also withdrew the recommendation that those individuals be elected to the Board. Mr. Hill and Mr. Wilhelm remain on the ballot for election to the Board. The Board reconsiderations resulted from the recent receipt by Farmer Mac of additional information that related to a services agreement between Mr. Hill and Farm Credit Bank of Texas and a letter to Farmer Mac from Mr. Wilhelm disclosing ongoing discussions between Mr. Wilhelm and CoBank regarding a services agreement.

Odd those directors didn’t think to offer up this information at the time their candidacy was being first considered.

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Dimon in the Rough

From Events Team Leader Mark Magee: a selection of quotations from “that conference call” with JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon regarding that $2 billion loss, and counting.

“We’re willing to bear volatility, and um, that’s life.”

“Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

“We’re not in a business where we are not going to make mistakes. We are going to make mistakes… I could never promise you no mistakes.”

“Even hindsight’s not 20/20, but with hindsight, yes, obviously we should have been paying more attention to it.”

Actually I quite like the fact that he is a little less than buttoned up. Then again, that’s probably why he won’t give up even one of his three job titles, so maybe it’s not such a good thing.

The Daily Coffee Grind

Mark also spotted this piece of “no idea how the 99% live” commentary from another hard-done-by CEO

“A lot of people don’t understand that I have no other income other than selling stock or borrowing against it,” said Mr. Stiller, in a phone interview from his home in Palm Beach, Fla.

“I went for a year where I couldn’t sell any shares,” Mr. Stiller said. “Lavish is all relative.”

Hey, thanks, Green Mountain CEO Robert Stiller, for letting us know that. Lavish is all relative. Let them eat cake. Not quite the same ring, but the same sentiment.

Another Piece of Reputational Damage Unlimitation

Director of Ratings Naveen Reddy – a Small Print first, if I’m not mistaken – spotted this
Reuters article.

Princess Cruises has been hit with a lawsuit accusing it of “outrageous conduct” and “callous disregard for human life” for failing to rescue three young men aboard a disabled Panamanian fishing boat, two of whom later died at sea.

Not a good year for Carnival. You’d think with one disaster already it’d be careful to avoid
another.

Oh, I’m Sorry. Would You Like to Try Again?

Mark also submitted this entry.

American International Group Inc. (AIG), the insurer majority owned by the U.S. Treasury
Department after a 2008 bailout, declined to reveal legal costs in response to the only investor who asked a question at its annual meeting. Only one shareholder asked a question at AIG’s annual meeting? One? Was anyone there from the Treasury? And why did it decline to answer? Never mind a shareholder’s right to know, this is a publicly-owned company. Every American citizen has a right to know.

The Tom Sawyer Whitewashing the Fence Clause

Compensation Analyst Ashley Kotzur found this while trawling through the Las Vegas Sands 2012 proxy statement, and kudos to Mark for coming up, against his own stiff
competition, with one of the funniest headlines we’ve ever had on Small Print. Just damn clever.

The Company also permits its named executive officers to use Company personnel for home repairs during business hours on a limited basis. The Company requires that these executives reimburse it in full for these services. There is no incremental cost to the Company for any of these benefits.

Some of this stuff just beggars belief. Home repairs? Company personnel have so little work to do for their actual employer that they can pop round to fix the wiring for their bosses’ cable TVs? Croupier by night, plumber by day. Bouncer cum landscaper? Well, at least it gets them out during the day….

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“We have more work to do, but it’s obvious at this point that there are many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment,” Dimon said on a conference call Thursday.

He also said the problematic portfolio still has a lot of risk and volatility, but his team will manage it to maximize economic value for shareholders. “What does that mean?” Dimon said. “It means that we’re not going to do something stupid.”

Except that JPMorgan apparently just did something stupid – something that cost investors on Friday. The stock closed at $36.98 per share, down nearly 9.3% compared to Thursday.

The stock has lost more than 10% of its value since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, as the global economy recovers from the crisis and Dimon battles to restore some of his firm’s credibility in the eyes of the market.

And yet JPMorgan continues getting into crosshairs with regulators. In February this year the U.S. Department of Justice said JPMorgan was one among five mortgage servicers to settle $25 billion over allegations of abusive foreclosure practices in the wake of the housing market collapse. The bank has had too many run-ins to name in one editorial. After its merger with Chase, for example, JPMorgan allegedly failed to separate client money held by its futures and options business between November 2002 and July 2009. As a result the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority said in June 2010 that it gave JPMorgan the regulator’s largest fine ever, £33.32 million. The bank also allegedly misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet, and paid $153.6 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle the matter, the regulator said June 2011. Then in July 2011, JPMorgan agreed to pay around $228 million to settle allegations by the SEC and others that it fraudulently rigged municipal bond reinvestment deals, generating millions in ill-gotten gains.

Meanwhile Dimon accuses his regulators of stupidity, which some might call a reckless move too. After former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker proposed a law intended to prevent banks from making overly risky bets, Dimon said in a Fox Business interview earlier this year that “Paul Volcker by his own admission has said he doesn’t understand capital markets. . . He has proven that to me,” according to news reports.

Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and co-author of the Merkley-Levin language establishing the Volcker Rule, pounced on the news Thursday. “The enormous loss JP Morgan announced today is just the latest evidence that what banks call ‘hedges’ are often risky bets that so-called ‘too big to fail’ banks have no business making,” he said in a statement.

In other evidence, JPMorgan’s financial statements reflect an AGR of 8, indicating higher accounting and governance risk than 92% of comparable companies. The AGR score has been lower than those of most companies since at least March 2009.

GMI gives JPMorgan an F on its corporate governance.

Region:  North America
Industry: Financials
Sector:   Banks
Market Cap: $ 165,667.2mm (Large Cap)

ESG Rating:  F
AGR:   Very Aggressive (8)

The post GMI Ratings Governance Issue | JPMorgan Chase & Co. appeared first on GMI Ratings.

Michael Brush writes about Jamie Dimon’s attack on the newspaper industry and its overpaid journalists, and nominates Mr. Dimon as his newest one percenter. It is certainly the first time I’ve ever read about a CEO defending his pay by attacking journalists as being overpaid. It certainly caused a flurry of journalists to write it up, so if he wanted attention, he succeeded.

This is what he said last week in New York at a presentation: “Obviously our business, in investment banking in particular, all of our businesses, we have high capital and high human capital. Newspapers — I went and got this one day just for fun — 42 percent payout ratio, which I just think is just damned outrageous. Worse than that, you don’t even make any money! We pay 35 percent. We make a lot of money.”

While it’s true that investment banking is high in human capital, I can’t see that it is anywhere near as high as journalism, which would not exist without writers and editors.

Michael, based on figures from GMI Ratings, compares Mr. Dimon’s pay to the head of newspaper publisher Gannett, which publishes USA Today among many other titles. While the CEO of JPMorgan earned $42 million in 2010 (the latest year for which figures are available), Craig Dubow, former CEO of Gannett, earned $4.5 million in the same year. So while more of Gannett’s revenues may be going on salaries, at least it’s not just the CEO’s.

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