Northrop executives get cushy deal for move back east

Oh, the woes of moving: Selling the old house, buying a new house, relocating the kids to a different school, finding a good dry cleaners, etc. Northrop CFO James Palmer must figure that an important fellow like himself shouldn't be stuck with the company's normal relocation program, which includes financial assistance, professional services, and administrative support. So Northrop disclosed in an SEC filing late last week that instead of its regular plan it would cut Palmer a check for $750,000 to cover the move. From footnoted.com:

It's hard to say just how much he would have gotten under the formal policy, but we doubt it would have been more than $750,000. After all, the policy (like most moving policies) tends to set maximums -- if Palmer's $750,000 move would have fit into the program, why cut a special deal? For what it's worth, it works out to a cool $280.16 per mile for the 2,677-mile move from the company's current headquarters to Falls Church.

CEO Wesley Bush is also getting a spacial deal that includes $1.6 million in security enhancements at his new home in Virginia. It's worth remembering that both Bush and Palmer make very nice livings without the add-ons - Bush at $22.8 million and Palmer $12.3 million, according to the latest proxy statement. Then again, what's really too much in the world of corporate America? The Washington Post recently examined the extent to which executive pay has outpaced everyday wages:

The largest single chunk of the highest-income earners, it turns out, are executives and other managers in firms, according to a landmark analysis of tax returns by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim. These are not just executives from Wall Street, either, but from companies in even relatively mundane fields such as the milk business. The top 0.1 percent of earners make about $1.7 million or more, including capital gains. Of those, 41 percent were executives, managers and supervisors at non-financial companies, according to the analysis, with nearly half of them deriving most of their income from their ownership in privately-held firms. An additional 18 percent were managers at financial firms or financial professionals at any sort of firm. In all, nearly 60 percent fell into one of those two categories. Other recent research, moreover, indicates that executive compensation at the nation's largest firms has roughly quadrupled in real terms since the 1970s, even as pay for 90 percent of America has stalled.