Money Mashup

By Paul Marck and Geoff Morgan

The Money Mashup combines data and creates visualizations from the Venture 100 rankings, which show Alberta’s biggest companies by revenue with the 2010 Executive Salary Survey of top-earning executives and their salaries and benefit packages.

We wanted to compare the salaries of the 50 highest-earning business executives in Alberta with the financial performance of their companies. Some of the results are what you might expect – a company with high earnings rewards its CEO likewise. In other instances, the link is not so apparent. There are instances where executive earnings outperform the company’s top line. There are also examples where a company has exceptional earnings, but the CEO’s pay package seemingly trails company performance.

In the first chart, you can make the direct comparison between company revenue growth (red line) and executive salary rank (blue line). The executive salary rank progresses from one to 50, with the highest paid CEO starting on the left and progressing left-to-right. The highest revenue growth (the highest red dot) is directly correlated with the best paid CEO in Alberta in 2009, John Sampson of Niko Resources. Compare that with the second best paid CEO in Alberta, Steve Laut with Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., his company had revenue growth dip by 28 per cent in 2009.

2009 Revenue Growth vs the 50 Best Paid CEOs

The second graphic is a traditional pie chart illustrating the weight of a company’s revenue, as a total of the whole, and where individual CEOs fit in. In other words, you can see the relative size of the enterprise a CEO presides over in terms of its 2009 revenues and the percentage of the size of the pie the revenues represent as part of the overall total. As you can see, Suncor and Rick George generate a large amount of the revenues at play here with 27.8 per cent of the pie.

All Revenues Divided by CEO

The third illustration shows the CEO’s salary ranking (blue) and compares it against the company’s revenue growth (red.) This demonstrates the relationship between a CEO’s position on the list and the revenue growth of its company. The highest paid CEOs start at the top and then work their way down.

Revenue Growth and CEO Salary Ranking

When viewed together, these graphs provide an excellent representation and comparison of what a CEO is paid relative to a company’s financial performance. For the most part, I do not see that companies are overpaying for performance. There are always exceptions, but Alberta CEO salaries look to fall in line with corporate performance.

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