Proxy statements have reported CEO pay for eons, but the amounts are largely speculative. They include estimated values for stock options and other stock-based pay that will not vest—nor will its real value be known—for years. In any given year, figuring out how much a CEO got paid as most people understand the term has been difficult or impossible. Finally, it seemed, this new SEC rule would reveal the truth.

But it doesn’t. To see why, consider an extreme example. The WTW consulting firm has studied 152 companies’ recent proxy statements and finds that among that group, the highest “compensation actually paid” to a CEO in the past three years was a massive $1.15 billion, and the lowest was a mind-bending negative $644 million—and they were both at the same company! WTW discreetly did not name the company, but your humble scribe has found it. It’s Lucid Group, the maker of luxury electric vehicles, and the CEO with bipolar pay is Peter Rawlinson.

You’re probably wondering how a CEO could get paid negative $644 million. No, Rawlinson didn’t write a nine-figure check to Lucid. The number reflects changes in the estimated values of stock grants, vested and unvested, during the year. Lucid stock plunged in 2022, so those values plunged also. The stock roared in 2021, which is why Rawlinson notched that $1.15 billion number. But the numbers aren’t based on real money; they’re still based on estimates of values that won’t be known for years.

Thus, in many proxy statements this spring you will find, in itty-bitty type, a statement that the amounts reported as “compensation actually paid” are calculated “in accordance with SEC rules” and “do not reflect the actual amount of compensation earned by or paid to” the CEO or other top executives. That is, the new “compensation actually paid” is not compensation actually paid.

Nonetheless, CEOs are probably right to be braced for headlines.

Geoff Colvin
geoff.colvin@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

Credit Suisse's downfall 

Swiss regulators have brokered a deal for UBS to acquire Credit Suisse for $3.25 billion to prevent a crisis from spreading across the global financial markets. It's an unceremonious end for Credit Suisse, which exited the last financial crisis better off than its rivals. Wall Street Journal

NYCB buying Signature Bank

New York Community Bancorp is acquiring the deposits and some of the loans of Signature Bank, another failed lender. U.S. prosecutors had been investigating Signature Bank's work with crypto clients before regulators seized the lender this month, along with Silicon Valley Bank, raising concerns about potential spillover effects to other regional lenders and the broader economy. Bloomberg

New liquidity protocols 

Leading central banks, including the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, have launched daily operations to provide dollar funding via standing swap lines to ease strains on the global funding markets. Upping the cadence of auctions from weekly to daily— which last took place during the COVID shock of 2020—is another effort to prevent the banking crisis from spreading. Financial Times

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

The strict anti-aging routine of a 45-year-old CEO who spends millions a year to be 18 again—from diet to exercise by Alexa Mikhail

OpenAI GPT-4 users win followers by sharing how they’re using it—including to start businesses in ‘HustleGPT challenge’ by Steve Mollman

More American women are single than ever before—and it’s costing them big money by Megan Leonhardt

Silicon Valley’s hubris nearly ruined the U.S. economy by Tristan Bove

3 signs your new employee regrets working with you and will boomerang back to their old job by Jane Thier

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Jackson Fordyce.