Greenpeace CEO Makes "More" Than Exxon CEO?

Does the Greenpeace CEO make more than the Exxon Mobil CEO?

Well, yes and no. In terms of absolute dollars, no. Not even close. But, in terms of a percentage of their respective organization’s revenue, yes. More. Very much more.

In terms of compensation as a percentage of revenue, the Greenpeace CEO pulls in considerably more than does his counterpart at Exxon Mobil.

Recently I performed research addressing this issue. The reason I performed this research was due to activist’s and NGO’s frequent claims that CEOs of multinational corporations (MNCs) take as compensation an unfair proportion of their companies’ overall revenue. After recently hearing this claim again, perhaps for about the 500th time, I wondered, “Who actually makes more in terms of percentage of revenue? Huge multinationals? Or NGOs?” I decided to do some digging, create a comparison, and take a look.

Methodology

Now, to address this question, what I decided to do was just take a “quick and dirty” look. I just wanted to test my theory with some trial research. Therefore, at the outset my intention was not to do an exhaustive study by including a large number of NGOs and MNCs in a representative and statistically controlled sample. When I began this research I decided that I would save that exhaustive study for another occasion should my theory be supported by the results of this “thumbnail” research project.

To commence my pilot research project, I simply selected, very much at random, one NGO and one multinational. The first two of each that came to mind were Greenpeace and Exxon Mobil. These two organizations are often at odds with each other and both are frequently in the news, making them top of mind.

To identify the revenues of Greenpeace I went to Guidestar.org. Guidestar is an organization which aggregates information about non-profit corporations. At their site, you may search for your non-profit of interest and find information you desire, much of it a no charge. One of the pieces of information stored by Guidestar is a non-profit’s US IRS Form 990.

The IRS Form 990 is a document that must be filed by all tax-exempt non-profit organizations operating within the United States. This document is much like a tax return and contains some information similar to what you would find in a for-profit corporation’s annual report or 10K filing. Among the information shown in a Form 990 is annual revenues and executive compensation. On the Guidestar site, I located Greenpeace’s Forms 990.

To obtain the revenue and executive compensation information for Exxon Mobil, I journeyed to SEC.gov, the site of the Securities and Exchange Commission for the United States. At that site, I accessed Exxon Mobil’s Schedule 14A Proxy Statement which contained summary compensation figures for Exxon Mobil executives for the years 2006 – 2008. Also available on that site was the Exxon Mobil 10K, containing the annual revenue figures that I sought. Additional information on Exxon Mobil’s revenue was obtained from their 2008 Annual Report available at ExxonMobil.com.

All information for this research comparison was obtained from US Government documents, or from an annual report, and is therefore considered to be highly reliable. The latest information that could be located for both Greenpeace and Exxon Mobil was from 2008. The 2009 figures were not as yet ready as of the date of this post.

Following is a summary of the information that I obtained from the sources.

Findings

Upon visiting Guidestar.org, I found that there are two significant Greenpeace organizations. One is the primary campaign organization, Greenpeace, Inc., and the other is a financial arm, Greenpeace Fund, Inc. When I examined the Forms 990 for both organizations, I found that the same person is the Executive Director for both entities and that that person collects a salary from both organizations. So, that is why in the table above you see two Greenpeace lines.

You can see that for the chief of the Greenpeace corporations his compensation for 2007 totals $168,764 and for 2008 the total is $207,248. You can also see that his total compensation for 2007 represented 0.28% of the joint organizations’ total revenue ($168,764/$59.1 million) and that for 2008 that percentage of revenues increased to 0.587% ($207,248/$35.3 million).

In comparison for the chief of Exxon Mobil, although he pulled down a hefty $16.7 million in 2007 and $22.4 million in 2008, his compensation as a percentage of revenue for 2007 and 2008 was 0.00412% ($16.7 million/$405 billion) and 0.00469% ($22.4 million/$477 billion), respectively.

Discussion

Of course, these two chiefs are not in same compensation range, and I have no doubt that because of their different levels of compensation the types of neighborhoods in which they dwell are probably very much different. Yet there are at a minimum two important take-aways to be had from this pilot study.

Take Away One: The first take-away to be noted is consistent with my thesis, that this data indicates that perhaps NGO chiefs take as compensation a higher percentage of their organization’s revenue. In this comparison, for 2008 the compensation as a percentage of revenue is about 125 times greater for the Greenpeace chief as compared to his Exxon Mobile counterpart. That’s quite a differential.

At least in this case of Greenpeace vs. Exxon Mobil, we can see that my thesis might be true, or at a minimum is well-supported. And yes, this is only one case comparison which as such it is not scientific and may or may not be representative of the greater NGO community, but I noted that research limitation at the top of this post.

However, if the Greenpeace and Exxon Mobil comparison could be used as representative, we would say that NGOs and activist organizations are hypocritical when they accuse MNC chiefs of receiving as compensation an “unfair” proportion of their company’s revenues. In order to make that a convincing argument to be applied across the NGO spectrum, more research would be needed in this area. This Greenpeace and Exxon Mobil sample comparison indicates that such research may prove very interesting, indeed.

Take Away Two: Note that for 2008, the Greenpeace chief saw a nice increase of about 23%, during a year when many people saw a decrease of 100% by hitting the ranks of the unemployed. And this 23% increase was during a year when for Greenpeace total revenue declined by about 40%. This Greenpeace compensation increase is, of course, much less than the Exxon Mobil chief’s increase of about 34%. But, for 2008, revenue at Exxon Mobil increased by about 17%. For Exxon Mobil, a legitimate argument can be made that the compensation increase is tied to performance. Can Greenpeace make that same argument? How does Greenpeace justify an increase of 23% for their chief when their revenues decreased by 40%?

There are critics who blast the financial industry for rewarding its executives with compensation increases in companies which underperform the previous fiscal year. Doesn’t this Greenpeace example speak to the same type of criticism? And if so, why is it that we do not hear in the mainstream media these kinds of disparagements applied to NGOs as well as MNCs?

Conclusion

This pilot research has shown that there is reason to believe that NGOs and other activist organizations do pay their executives a higher percentage of revenues than is paid by the corporations that they combat in the environmental, social, and cultural arenas. The test research performed here indicates that further research should be done in this area.

The outcome of more a more statistically reliable enquiry could be used as the basis of counterstrategy against claims by NGOs and activists that executives at MNCs are “greedy” and take more than their “fair share” of revenues. Such a counterstrategy element would perhaps go far in overcoming these corporate image-damaging claims in the eyes of the marketplace.

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UPDATE: December 7, 2011 – For more research on Greenpeace executive compensation, see the articles listed below:

• Greenpeace Executive Salary Increase Soars Past Inflation
• Greenpeace Executive Salary in the Top 5%
• Another Greenpeace Executive Salary Near the Top