Clear Channel CEO Eligible for a 20% Bonus If He's Fired
Clear Channel Outdoor International (CCO) CEO William Eccleshare has a sweet deal. He signed on as the billboard company’s chief in August and his contract makes it difficult for the company to fire him from his £402,685 a year job.
If CCO wants to fire him, they have to give him a year’s notice. And if they don’t want him to work for that year — and why would you, if you want him gone? — the company has to pay him a 20 percent bonus. (That bonus is couched as a payment in lieu of lost benefits.) Eccleshare even gets paid if he’s under investigation for wrongdoing. The former BBDO Europe man also gets an 18,000 annual car allowance.
CCO isn’t doing so well right now. Its Q3 2009 revenues were $660.6 million, down 19 percent and it made a loss of $34.4 million.
Eccleshare isn’t the only new exec at CCO who has a cushy gig. In October, Herb Hill signed on as “director of special accounting and information systems operations,” for a salary of $200,000 plus a bonus of $7,143 per month bonus through March 2010. (So really that’s a salary of $250,000.) He also gets a $250,000 bonus if the company files a 10-K form with the SEC, its annual report. Given that CCO is required by law to file such a form, the chances of CCO not filing it — and Hill not getting his salary-doubling bonus — are nil.
Getting paid for doing not very much is a bit of a trend in the ad business. Omnicom (OMC)’s top executives get multimillion dollar bonuses even if they are fired, and WPP (WPPGY) chief Martin Sorrell is eligible for a $95 million payout even if his stock goes down (as long as everyone else’s goes down even more).
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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