[hipsterelitist]

Then how would you properly incentivize someone to come in to take a company out of such dire circumstances?

Someone with the talent to take a 500M loss and reduce it to 10M certainly would command the same salary with more upside at a solvent company.

[chiph]

It's a case of: "Well, the operation was a success, even if the patient died."

A turnaround isn't a success until the company is in the black. If the new CEO just ends up producing a smaller crater (no such thing as a "soft landing" in bankruptcy court), he still failed.

[katbyte]

uh, correct me if i'm wrong but isn't that her job to do that and typically those jobs pay extremely well?

And on the flip side, if there was a large bonus for reducing debt by that much by year end, would that incentivize this person to do anything possible to reduce debt even at the cost of the companies long term survival?

Expanding on that it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that bonuses for some year end goal could be causing CEO's and others to do whatever it takes to get their bonus while damaging companies long term survival, because they put their bonus first not the company.