Published in PC Hardware

Hector will get a raise

by on14 December 2007

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Most likely related to dealings with the analysts


When you make a mistake at work, you normally expect to get written up, or maybe even fired. It would seem that at AMD when you make a mistake, and subsequently spend your time explaining the fiscal disaster your company is in to financial analysts, you get a healthy raise. According to a recent filing with the SEC, Hector Ruiz will have his compensation agreement amended, with his new annual salary being $1,124,000, which is up from $1,046,358 annually during 2006. However, it must be said that the U.S. dollar lost much of its value in the past year, around 11 percent against the Euro to be exact, so it turns out that this isn't much of a raise at all.

We are not math experts, but when your stock is down 60 percent in 2007 and you just took a $3.2 billion dollar charge on the ATI acquisition, and you spent most of your time apologizing to financial analysts and promising them a better future, it doesn’t seem to add up that you should get a raise out of the equation. We have just one question to ask… when faced with this situation, do you have to negotiate the raise yourself, or do you have an agent who does it for you?

Ruiz continues to be one of the highest paid CEOs, and has been honest about his failure to execute this year on almost every front; we don’t know why the story isn’t more along the lines that Ruiz should be stepping down. The real question has to be what kind of message does this send the AMD employees in the trenches who are facing serious consequences at every turn? While we are starting to see some slight indications that AMD might be able to turn this situation around, we have to wonder how things ever got this bad, and who is ultimately responsible.

Read more here.

Last modified on 15 December 2007
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