Wake up employees our leaders are looting this company.
Chesapeake $CHK filed a classic Friday after market close 8-K that disclosed its executives will be getting $25 million upfront because they are not properly “motivated and incentivized” with the current compensation program.
Where is this $25 million coming from? Only $6 million on the balance sheet.
Welcome to another edition of “Oil & Gas execs paying themselves an absurd amount to destroy billions in shareholder capital” Legalized Theft Edition
Doug Lawler, CEO of Chesapeake Energy
Since 2014:
$98.4MM total comp
$17.8MM change of control package
$CHK: -99%
Preparing for bankruptcy right now
What’s the worst the chimpanzee could do? Bankrupt $CHK? By my chimp math, even in that scenario, we save $8MM in CEO compensation plus another $25MM in cash retention bonuses for the mo–ns that ran it into the ground.
To put it another way, if I had stolen a chimpanzee from the local zoo in 2014 and paid it only $90 million to run Chesapeake Energy, it would have treated $CHK shareholders better than current CEO Doug Lawler.