[PhilipTai]

No. There is really no difference whether CEO is paid in cash or in stock, regarding the negative impact of the pay.

Scenario 1: CEO get paid $50 million in stock. Scenario 2: CEO get paid $50 million in cash. And then the company raise $50 million from stock market, so that it will have the same amount of cash as scenario 1.

They are the same.

[missedthecue]

Or they may not be able to raise cash, or they may be a private company without access to the stock market, or they may have bylaws preventing such a thing.

Either way, the employee is not made worse off because the CEO collects a fat stack of options at the expense of the shareholder.

[CRConrad]

> Either way, the employee is not made worse off because the CEO collects a fat stack of options at the expense of the shareholder.

Of course the employees are made worse off by that: If the shareholders didn't give all that money to the CEO, they could give it to the other employees in stead and be no worse off themselves. The CEO uses up all the available potential for employee compensation at the expense of everyone else.

Your thesis is just astonishingly weird.