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In the past three years, companies including Chesapeake Energy, Hertz, VICE Media, and Silicon Valley Bank have all filed for bankruptcy. But that’s not all they have in common. Their top executives either cashed out company stock or received millions of dollars in bonuses soon before their companies filed. And apparently, it’s all legal.
Straight Arrow News contributor Adrienne Lawrence thinks it’s time to make new laws that prevent top executives from taking big paydays when their companies are on the edge of bankruptcy. She says corporations are acting fraudulently and failing to protect employees.
But so much more must be done. In addition to beefing up SEC laws, the government must implement measures that authorize the feds to hold executives and any type of leadership civilly — and I would also argue criminally — accountable for taking these big paydays and bonuses, knowing that they’re on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s a form of fraud as far as I’m concerned.
These leaders, they took oaths to do what was in the company’s best interest — to lead, not to fill their coffers before D-Day. Unionizing will not stop this form of corporate greed. VICE had a union. Their execs easily pocketed what little money was left in the 24 hours after that mass round of layoffs.
We need far more, we need laws, laws that regard such behavior as a type of self-dealing in the corporate context. There has to be something out there so that they can empower employees and shareholders to sue executives in their personal capacity for their pre-perilous payday.
