mocoNews - The Slack-Jaw Reaction To Motorola's Sanjay Jha's Pay Package

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Dianne See Morrison

mocoNews.net
Tuesday, April 7, 2009; 12:00 PM

Fallout from Motorola (NYSE: MOT) CEO Sanjay Jha's pay package continues. Though the size of Jha's pay package came out earlier this month causing many reporters and bloggers to ask then what had he done to deserve that level of compensation, the news that he is now the country's highest earning CEO has sparked fresh controversy. In two separate CEO compensation surveys, one commissioned by the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) , the other by the Wall Street Journal, Jha's pay was shown to be substantially higher than his other highly-paid peers. According to the nytimes.com, his package is $19.8 million higher than Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison, who came second on their list, bringing home $84.6 million. On The WSJ.com's list Jha's compensation was double that of Occidental Petroleum's CEO Ray R. Irani, who raked in $49.9 million.

Most reporters, bloggers and the readers commenting on the news asked again what the 46 year-old Jha, the former Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) COO brought in last year to Motorola to turn things around, had actually done to earn that amount. Others found the amount staggeringly inappropriate given the economic crisis, and especially as the company is obviously still struggling. Those, just so you know, were the polite comments. As for Jha ever sitting down and actually answering what he's doing to bring the company back from the dead, it's clear this is just not going to happen anytime soon. Motorola, it seems, has him in lockdown, and though the nytimes asked for a number of interviews, its reporter was rebuffed on all occasions.

Still, it's also important to point out that a vast majority of Jha's $104.4 million?$103.5 million to be precise, is made up of restricted stock and options. Jha's options have an exercise price of $9.82 the closing price of the company's stock on August 4, the date they were awarded. At yesterday's close they were trading at $4.69, making that $103.5 million currently worthless.