Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel is overpaid

Categories: Business, Target
Thumbnail image for GreggSteinhafel.jpg
Steinhafel has enough money to breed giant Target-brand dogs.
Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel makes a lot of money -- too much, says the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.

Steinhafel's $24 million annual salary is the highest CEO salary in the state, according to new data released by the Business Journal. Great as that sounds, Steinhafel also made another, more dubious list, which ranked him the No. 4 most overpaid CEO in Minnesota.

Steinhafel's not being punished for having a big salary. In fact, he's not even that far ahead of second-place finisher George Buckley of 3M, who pulled in $23.7 million last year.

But with a "Company Performance" rank of 60th, and a salary rank of No. 1, the gap between what Steinhafel gets paid and how his company performs is dramatic -- almost as dramatic as how fast his salary has increased.

In 2008, his first year as CEO, Steinhafel got $13.3 million; last year that number inched up to $13.5 million; and in 2010 it nearly doubled to $24 million.

Joining Steinhafel and Buckley on the highest-paid list are US Bancorp CEO Richard Davis ($18.8 million last year), Ameriprise Financial's James Cracchiolo ($17.7 million) and General Mills Inc. CEO Ken Powell, who makes a paltry $12.3 million considering how much cereal that place turns out.

The top of the "most overpaid" list is mostly populated by the relatively unknown, but bringing up the back end are Best Buy's Brian Dunn at No.  6 and Supervalu CEO Craig Herckert in seventh.

supertarget.jpg
The only thing more "Super" is Steinhafel's stock options.
With a base pay of only $1.5 million, Steinhafel's salary came mostly in a pension plan bonus, an incentive bonus and $11.2 million in stock options, according to the Business Journal.

Among those people who won't be popping champagne to hear that Steinhafel's the best-paid CEO in Minnesota are the 1,000 Twin Cities jobs -- fully 9 percent of the staff -- that Target Corp. cut in early 2009, as the recession set in. At the time, Steinhafel sounded a morose note.

"We are clearly operating in an unprecedented economic environment that requires us to make some extremely difficult decisions to ensure Target remains competitive over the long-term," he said.

Now, Greg Steinhafel has his very own blissful "unprecedented economic environment." 

Previously:

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