Occidental Petroleum'S CEO took home $400M in 2006

[Teufelhunden]

:flipoff2: Occidental boss took home $400M in 2006:flipoff2:

CEO nets one of biggest paychecks in corporate history; most from stock options accumulated over last decade.

CHICAGO (Reuters) -- Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s chairman and chief executive took in more than $400 million in compensation last year, the company said in a filing, one of the biggest single-year payouts in U.S. corporate history.

The largest part of Ray Irani's 2006 payout was $270.2 million from the exercise of options awarded from 1997 to 2006, representing more than 7.1 million shares, according to the company's annual proxy statement, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in March.

Irani also received $93.3 million in stock and dividends from a deferred stock program when the company closed the plan in October due to increases in liability and expenses for the program, the company said.
Where are they now?

Irani's salary in 2006 was $1.3 million and his cash bonus was $1.4 million, according to the filing. But stock and option awards and other benefits lifted his 2006 compensation to $55.6 million, the proxy said.

In the proxy, the company said that from December 1990 - when Irani succeeded Armand Hammer as chief executive - through 2005, the company's stock rose to about $40 a share from $9 and its total shareholder return was 699 percent.

"When you look at this, this is solid pay for performance," said Richard Kline, an Occidental spokesman. "It serves the best interest of the corporation and the best interest of the shareholder."

[PureSound15]

Aside from the company that you're referring too, it's not uncommon for CEO's to take home such big checks and here's why...

Either that CEO did something that created such a huge net profit for the company and his future value increased to the extent that his bonus is only a small chunk of change compared to future profits

OR

Obviously that CEO is living a pretty luxurious life right now,what happens if the company falls apart because of his doing? Risk vs return. Nobody will hire that man to be their CEO if it is known that he was the reason for the destruction of the previous company. He's taking all of that risk on his shoulders, I'd rather see a CEO take home a big check than to see a NBA player take home millions for playing a game of basketball.

Shareholders earned 699%, ridiculous.

The real problem sits on top of the Equity theory, people aren't happy that their CEO is taking home so much when they might be struggling to get by. Look at what he does vs the guy who pushes a broom around. I'm all for the CEO:)

[Crawlin]

The real problem sits on top of the Equity theory, people aren't happy that their CEO is taking home so much when they might be struggling to get by. Look at what he does vs the guy who pushes a broom around. I'm all for the CEO

I'm with the above...

[Karps TA]

The CEO of Ford got paid $28 mil over the last quarter and his company lost $12.5 billion. So by comparison this guy must be really good at his job.

I say kill them all.

[Brandon W.]

i wish i could make that kind of money..good for him he must have done something right. im sure he earned it..managing that big of a buisness must be stress beyond relief. if i were him id retire on that note.;)

[Al]

Blue bloods. Born that way, die that way.

I'm related to someone who was a CEO of a fortune 500 company. I am also just distant enough in the family tree to not be able to reap any benefits.

When I hear "stock options," what does that mean?

[PureSound15]

Employees are able to buy stock at less than market value.

Example...


You and I may pay $12/share of BCMs stock, but Andy might buy it at $6/share because he's an admin.

Of course if he buys it at 6/share and sells it at the end of a quarter when it rose to 18/share, he just tripled his money.

It enables employees to buy a lot more stock than they would have otherwise not been able to, but to get as much benefit from owning that stock as any other person.

[Karps TA]

Those kind of payoffs is why we have mostly morons and con men in politics. Because all the really smart people stay in the private sector where they can make real money and not have the headaches.

This guy is making 1000 times more then the president.

[Prince Valiant]

Honestly...when I compare what CEO's do, and say movie actors/TV personalities, it's no contest. CEO's earn their money.

Think about it. They essentially bring to market the engine of our society. Without it, we absolutely could not work. We couldn't manufactuer. We couldn't deliver or transport. We couldn't import or export. We couldn't do one damn thing.

Actors/TV people...what do they do?

Put people in there who aren't as good an executive, making poor decisions and what happens? Cost go up for the consumer...though the amount of profit is GREAT, the profit margin isn't so hot...so if cost to them goes up, cost to us goes up. And that again, would lead to a less productive society/world as well.

And it's not like they aren't dealing with a easy to access naturual resource either...more and more it's getting more difficult to get oil, with increased competition on the world market from india/china.

Considering what our country would be like without their product, I say they earned it. We are talking about a country with what, a 13 trillion dollar GDP? They've earned their pay, especially when one considers that much of this is his stock options.

[wikked]

Actors/TV people...what do they do?


You mean besides get arrested for DUI's, vehicular manslaughter, sexual assaults, battery, narcotics, etc.... and only get a slap on the wrist? :mad:

[84hurst]

That's great that a company CEO makes a good living, they should! But, to be taking home that much money knowing that the entire US is bitching about the gas prices being way to high, this should be telling this CEO that maybe there's a problem somewhere. I'm tired of hearing that gas prices are going up again. Gas is one of a very few products that we absolutely rely on everyday, which is why these oil companies can ask an arm and a leg for a gallon and get away with it! If the CEO could make gas $2.00 per gallon and keep it there for a while, he could make $400m and I could care less. The fact that they gouge us for every penny is what pisses me off. That's their way of manipulating the US citizens. :fire

[Karps TA]

Honestly...when I compare what CEO's do, and say movie actors/TV personalities, it's no contest. CEO's earn their money.

Think about it. They essentially bring to market the engine of our society. Without it, we absolutely could not work. We couldn't manufactuer. We couldn't deliver or transport. We couldn't import or export. We couldn't do one damn thing.

Actors/TV people...what do they do?

Put people in there who aren't as good an executive, making poor decisions and what happens? Cost go up for the consumer...though the amount of profit is GREAT, the profit margin isn't so hot...so if cost to them goes up, cost to us goes up. And that again, would lead to a less productive society/world as well.

And it's not like they aren't dealing with a easy to access naturual resource either...more and more it's getting more difficult to get oil, with increased competition on the world market from india/china.

Considering what our country would be like without their product, I say they earned it. We are talking about a country with what, a 13 trillion dollar GDP? They've earned their pay, especially when one considers that much of this is his stock options.

Turn that around though. Theres plenty of CEO's that run companies into the ground, and the people who pay the price is the low level employees who lose their job. Meanwhile the worst that happens to the CEO is he get's a nice healthy buyout and within a year or 2 he's back working and screwing up some other company.

No 1 man is that important to a company. He wasn't our drilling for oil or getting his hands dirty. Every oil company made record profits. It had nothing to do with his leadership. He just happened to be sitting on the throne during the right time.

[Crawlin]

Let me ask this.....

If part of your "annual worth/income" is based off of assets, what happens when a car you own that was worth 20,000 last year is worth $25,000 this year. you are worth $5000 more right?

Now figure in all the oil reserves, all the millions of gallons of oil, etc... that a company has, and if the VALUE of those go up from the $55 they once were to the $80/barrel they are worth now, don't you get that extra $25/barrel as profit in your final bottom line that the news reports on.

i think people fail to grasp that, and I think people fail to realize, like Puresound says, is that alot of that WORTH or PAY is not exactly CASH. It's an asset that could be liquidated and turned INTO cash at some point, but more than likely never will be(dispersed through a will to family?)

Bill Gates is worth HOW much? I doubt he could just go to the bank and empty out that much in cash. Same thing goes for a company

[PureSound15]

Let me ask this.....

If part of your "annual worth/income" is based off of assets, what happens when a car you own that was worth 20,000 last year is worth $25,000 this year. you are worth $5000 more right?

Now figure in all the oil reserves, all the millions of gallons of oil, etc... that a company has, and if the VALUE of those go up from the $55 they once were to the $80/barrel they are worth now, don't you get that extra $25/barrel as profit in your final bottom line that the news reports on.

i think people fail to grasp that, and I think people fail to realize, like Puresound says, is that alot of that WORTH or PAY is not exactly CASH. It's an asset that could be liquidated and turned INTO cash at some point, but more than likely never will be(dispersed through a will to family?)

Bill Gates is worth HOW much? I doubt he could just go to the bank and empty out that much in cash. Same thing goes for a company




+1 :)

I wonder how many people are reading this post saying "huh?"

[Karps TA]

I understand it completely. However, the board members and CEO's routinely cash out these stock options whenver they want to buy a house or new car, or pay taxes. All you have to do is chech yahoo finance for insider trading and see who cashed what when for how much. It's not like they are never going to see the money. The only reason why some don't cash in all of it, is cause it's more money then they can spend at the time, and/or don't want to take the tax hit. It's like an IRA to them.

[Prince Valiant]

Turn Theres plenty of CEO's that run companies into the ground You are right...there ARE plenty of poor ceo's.
and the people who pay the price is the low level employees who lose their job Not really...the people who pay the BIGGEST price are the shareholders (to which the ceo may own substantial sums of shares), some of who have 100,000's if not millions invested in a company.

Oftentimes, you see "golden parachutes" for higher up executives, not because the good ol' boys (IE the shareholders) want to reward their buddy who just screwed the little guys (the workers) out of jobs...and at the same time, lost most, if not ALL of your investments into a company. You see great severence packages for a couple of reasons:

1)The company was likely to fail anyways, and a ceo guides toward a "soft landing", one in which the ceo was able to make a company look good enough, straighten out it's books enough so that the company was "sale-able" and therefore not a total loss for investors. Investors may choose to reward this, and actually, this is oftentimes pre-negotiated and for the investors, seen as desireable and less risky.

2) Threats of litigation are another big reason...ceo's, are not like regular employee's in that they are "At will" employee's like some guy on the line...ceo's are contracted. If let go before their contract is up, a CEO is then entitled to compensation per their contract. Oftentimes, the buyout is pre-negotiated as above...and if not, the legal disputes of the buyout might be costly and a losing proposistion to the investors so buyouts that fall in line relative to other companies that are similarly sized are offered.

But to negate the importance of a ceo's affect on the bottom line is absurd. Companies can be in the red or black for many reasons, some of which it can't control...but a good or bad ceo can make the difference between VERY red or just a little red, and a little black versus VERY black.

[Karps TA]

Maybe I'm a little bias cause I'm tired of seeing board members and CEO's get their bonuses and stocks, while employees are going without their bonuses because of the decisions the CEO's and board members have made. CEO's in my opinion are overvalued. They care only about shareholders which is completely messed up.

The shareholders and the greed from the stock market is what is going to ruin this country. Check out cnn.com. Citibank is cutting 17,000 jobs. Not because they are losing money, they had over $12 billion in profit, but because shareholders want to see bigger growth. Bunch of crap that people lose their jobs over that.

There was a time when people invested in companies because they believed in them and the product they make. It was for the longterm. Now everyone wants quick turnarounds. Company X makes $10 mil in profits but some analyst expected the company to make $12 mil so the stock drops. Company Y loses $10 mill but layoffs 5000 employees and the stock goes up.

[Prince Valiant]

It does work that ceo's will go through periods in which they are over compensated, and times were they aren't...it tends to cycle, and since ceo's compenstations are compared to other ceo's of companies similarly sized, it's all tied together.

Even though I'd qualify as a "little guy" in my company, I don't think that a company has an obligation to keep my job. If my company improves efficiency and can therefore do the same, if not more work with less employee's (and in effect, with less cost) then by all means it can and should let me go.

That sounds harsh, but the "big picture" affect is that money saved becomes money invested...whether you pay it to share holders, bonuses, etc, that money becomes opportunity for investment. This makes it easier for someone else to start a new business, or expand and existing one that might have the opportunity to employ me.

Even if it's not "invested" per se, and becomes a bonus that is spent on frivilous luxury goods like a yacht, it still becomes money available to other sectors of the economy, allowing for growth and potential for new wealth.

Plus, you use the example of company Y loses 10 mill, lays off 5,000 employees and their stock goes up...of course it does. Stock isn't figured by how many employee's you have, but by your assest/holdings and debts/cost. Employee's represent not only current cost, but future liabilities as well in terms of retirement, benefits, etc. Gerneral rule is that if total yearly cost of an employee is roughly their salary + 1/2 salary=total cost. In your example, company Y lost 10 mill, then lays off 5000 employees. Let's say the average wage was 30G a year, making total cost ~ 45G a year (actually low for factory workers). This translates to a immediate cost reduction of ~ 225 MILLION dollars. Of COURSE the stock will immediately rise...especially if the company output doesn't change.

Change their loss to 1 BILLION dollars...and 225 million is still going a long way toward shoring that up. But even more importantly, you've reduced your future liabilities...IE, you don't have the npredictable cost of healthcare now or in the future, retirement cost, etc, so cutting 5000 employees seems like a wise thing to do, again, if production isn't hurt.

[Karps TA]

Even if it's not "invested" per se, and becomes a bonus that is spent on frivilous luxury goods like a yacht, it still becomes money available to other sectors of the economy, allowing for growth and potential for new wealth.

.

So 17,000 people spending money at local business and paying taxes is somehow less important to the economy and country then 1 guy who buys a couple high ticket items? I would argue that those 17,000 people do alot more for the economy. Take for example layoffs at Ford and GM. You think the 35,000 people Ford kicked out of jobs are ever going to buy a Ford product again, or that their family members will or the communities that lost those plants?

When companies get rid of jobs they lose customers. It's no different then a customer having a bad experience at a store and telling everyone about it. It's a downward spiral.

and it's one thing to cut jobs and spending, but not at the price of giving a CEO a huge bonus for doing it. CEO's who grow companies and add jobs should be rewarded. But the ones who turn to slashing jobs in order to cut costs are doing so just to hide the missteps they've taken that put themselves into that position.

[Prince Valiant]

So 17,000 people spending money at local business and paying taxes is somehow less important to the economy and country then 1 guy who buys a couple high ticket items?
You make the assumption that those 17,000 won't get another job though.

Put it this way...if companies goals were to keep as many employees on as possible, as long as they generate a profit you'd have several ramifications:

1) Less profits means less money to investors...making investing unfavorable means of making money.

2) If investing is an unfavorable means of making money, then people little and big, will find it difficult to generate the cash flow to start new companies, or grow old ones.

3) Likewise, with few employees being let go due to companies quite arbitrarily holding on to them, then there are few "quality" employees in the pool to hire for the company thats starting or expanding...after they FINALLY generated some cash to start/grow.

4. This of course, makes the pool of employees more difficult to obtain, and likely more expensive...driving up cost, and therefore again, making it difficult to hit the "break-even" point at which you begin to generate profits.

5) Higher employer cost translates to higher product cost...making it more expensive, and therefore less desirable to purchase. Especially abroad to other countries, and making other countries good seem more attractive to consumers at home.

6) And you have to realize, investors is "US" in the since that if you have money market funds, 401K's, pensions, etc...all that money is in "investments". If there are poor returns, then it is unlikely that your investments will grow substatially...especially when compared against inflation that would be greater due to this unfavorable economic climate. This is how the "little guy" also becomes wealthy...and without profits, it just won't happen.

Listen, I give you enough credit to know that you understand that the above is a very simplistic sketch of what happens in when employers put employer loyalty above good business sense. BUT, if you want a perfect illustration of what happens to a economy when employees rights are greater than employers, and employees are "valued" greater than profits, just look to france...they've got VERY strict rules about lay-offs, vacation, pay, etc...considered EXTREMELY favorable to employees.

However, the unemployment rate is somewhere around 17%. Inflation is sky high. Very few property owners. Many don't even own cars.

Look at individual groups, and it's worse...because of "lifetime garunteed employment", it's rare that people ages 18-34 are working as anything other than a laborer, and even then, the unemployment rate in that group is in the 30-40% range. Foriegners, to which there is no shortage in france, have unemployment rates into the 75% range for some groups.

On top of that, there isn't alot of growth in the french economy...not many, if any companies have started anew in france in sometimes, aside from highly skilled biomedical jobs.

So it's not like no ones tried what you've talked about before....it's just never worked.

[Karps TA]

In some places those 17,000 people don't get new jobs. Look at what happens to towns that existed because of auto mfgrs like Flint.

My problem with investing is it's become a monster that is out of control. Companies exist purely now to appease shareholders. The people controlling companies now are they guys on wall street who have nothing to do with the company besides their own "opinion" of how the company should be doing. CEO's for the most part care more about appeasing those people then their employees and actual customers. It's not about whether the family at the store feel they bought a good product that the company made, it's whether or not the shareholders and analysts like what they are doing. And that's just wrong IMO. It's why jobs keep leaving this country, and why people have very little pride in the work they do. Cause in the end, it doesn't really matter if the suit on Wall Street isn't made happy.

Companies that make good products, are profitable, good members of the community, and treat their employees well should be rewarded. Instead companies like Tyco and Enron were rewarded because they had CEO's that appeased shareholders instead, and focused on their own greed. Look what happened to them.

The stock market and investing may be very American in it's ideals, but it is very anti-American in how it functions.

[Prince Valiant]

Companies exist purely now to appease shareholders. Again...here is a statement that might seem justified, and sounds good to say, but on it's face can't be true.

Without a good product that consumers want or need to buy, they cannot survive.

This is important, because take the 17,000 employee example again...and imo, the best example yet.

Say that you kept on all the blue or white collar workers you could, despite needing 17,000 workers less.

Again, assuming a 30,000 average salary (very very underestimated for automotive worksers) this brings the average yearly cost for an employee around 45,000...meaning your yearly cost is ~ 765 million dollars a year.

Now, that's 765 MILLION dollars that the company could invest in product development, engineering, quality control, design, etc. (of course, the real figure in this example would be closer to 1.275 billion dollars/year)

GM is a PERFECT example of this. Look how long they kept their basic small car around (the cavy)...look how poor it's quality was percieved, how it was basically outclassed by it's competition. Take it's larger car...the monte and impala are riding on a chassis that, aside from improvements for crash standards and some NVH, and to handle more power than originally designed, has been around since 1988. Look at their minivans and their percieved performance...these are all supposed to be HUGE sellers, but vastly underperform in the marketplace relative to what a GM product should historically be doing.

Now, maybe not by you, but by the general public, it's percieved that GM products are inferior...don't you think that 765 million dollars yearly savings could have done something to off-set that?

And therein lies the advantage that foriegn competitors such as honda/toyota/korean has over us...they are FAR more profitable than us, and therefore can routinely update and develop new platforms, IE, invest in quality, invest in technology, invest in powertrains, invest in marketing...whereas US companies have to kind of do a "one-or-the-other" approach, sacrificing quality for performance, or some combination with similar effect...all while losing Billions a year.

And that's just the companies investing in themselves...if the american public didn't invest in the company in the first place, there would be NO company, NO jobs at all.


Instead companies like Tyco and Enron were rewarded because they had CEO's that appeased shareholders instead, and focused on their own greed. Look what happened to them. You said it yourself...look what happened to them. They weren't rewarded as you contend. Investors lost Billions. CEO's, CFO's, etc were sent to Jail. Ancilary companies (aurther anderson, anyone) lost everything and were disbanded...tyco and enron were far from rewarded...and those that profited illegally are definitely worse off now...and here was the results of hiring bad ceo's. They may have made people think they were good...but the results of their work lost people/workers everyting.

[Karps TA]

You make it sound like the companie's employees don't "invest" in their companies though by buying their product. In the example of GM, how many of those employees went ahead and with their $45K salary were buying new GM vehicles because of their discounts? So now 30,000 ex-employees decide they will never own a GM vehicle again in their life cause that company destroyed their life. How many hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales does that equate to? From a PR standpoint how many EX big 3 auto workers now look to the Japanese mfgs who are adding jobs in America and go an support them instead?

Cutting jobs is the easy quick answer for every company. It immediately gets a positive response from the market. Which is a double win for the CEOs and board members who get pats on the back and extra money in their pockets.


In the end it worked out against Enron and Tyco, but they lived high on the hog for awhile and the machine kept feeding the greed. The more the CEO's and CFO's worked and massaged the numbers the more investors went crazy for the stock and everyone finally did lose. And the people who lost the most were the tens of thousands who lost their jobs and made the mistake of trusting the CEO's to take care of the company. Do you really think the people who were several years away from retiring and lost their entire retirement package and jobs really feel vindicated that those CEO's are in jail? I'm sure when they are 75 and still stuck working that will really help them pay their bills.

[Prince Valiant]

You make it sound like the companie's employees don't "invest" in their companies though by buying their product. I didn't say that they didn't...but if a company put it's employee's consumer interest above that of the general public, and thus sacrificed the quality of it's product to keep "employed consumers", then it's not going to stay in business long...and then there would be NO consumers, and NO jobs.


So now 30,000 ex-employees decide they will never own a GM vehicle again in their life cause that company destroyed their life.I've lost jobs before...I'm not so sure that I'd qualify it as a "life destroying" event. It sucked, I went out started looking for work and eventually finding it. There is no law stating you can only get one job in a lifetime, so please...keep the grandiose hyperbole to a minimum.

It's never the desired goal to eliminate employees...instead, the desire is to increase production efficiency (IE make more products with the same employees), and the increased consumer demands are from the resulting market growth (IE, more consumers, worldwide, increasing populations). If production efficiency can't compensate for increased consumer demands, you add more employees. If increasing efficiency can't cope with increased consumer demand due to GM grabbing greater market share, then again, more employees are needed. If expanding into different or new markets, (such as increasing the size of the GM performance division), again, workers uneeded from the line because of increased efficiency or new employees can be used. That's what any company desires, because if they've got that going on, people MUST be buying their products, they MUST be generating profits, the must be doing something right...companies aren't motivated by some odd notion to eliminate all of it's employees.

And beyond buying stock in the company, or in some cases, employee owned companies, employees DON'T invest in the company...they provide a service. When a company needs capital (IE cash), investors will fill the bill provided it makes good business sense.

The employer/employee service relationship again, is "at will" in that if the employee doesn't feel like working for a company anymore, for any reason (say a new job) he or she can give notice at any time. Likewise, if a service isn't needed anymore, and employer can terminate the employee, at any time.

It's like this...say I pay you to come paint my house...you do a good job, and I pay you 1,000 bucks for the weeks worth of service. Thank you.

But then you show up next week to paint my house again! Must I continue to pay you out of "loyalty", even though my house is already painted and I don't need the service? No, of course not...I'm not obligated to in anyway shape or form.

Just like if I put 1,000 bucks out there, you don't HAVE to agree to come paint my house...it's your call too. This is the nature of at-will employment. You didn't invest anything...you possessed a skill that could be of service to me. I on the other hand made the investment in my house, and am entitled to any rewards that investment might have given me...IE, you aren't entitled to profits generated from the sale of my house, and you aren't exposed to any risk if I lost money...you got your money for your service.

I don't deny that many if not most all employees will never buy a GM product again...but when you talk about 30,000 employees vs 2,000,000,000 potential costumers in the future lost due to making a poor product that only your employees will buy at a very low profit due to poor business making decisions, the decision certainly becomes clearer.

And yeah, GM let go alot of employees...but it's not like those let go isn't going with nothing. They were given severance packages worth over 100,000 dollars. Older employees were offered severence AND early retirements with full benifits. Trust me, if my company offered me two/three years pay, and I could go out and start looking for a new job right away, I'd be on that in a heartbeat...say it took three months to find a job. Oh well, I've got a comperable pay AND 100,000 dollars in the bank.


Cutting jobs is the easy quick answer for every company. It immediately gets a positive response from the market. Which is a double win for the CEOs and board members who get pats on the back and extra money in their pockets. Again, not really. It's only the "easy" answer when it actually solves the problem. It'd make NO sense to cut employees if you are moving enough products to barely keep up with demand in the first place. Or, if you can find fault in other areas that might be correctable (IE, better or more marketing, more efficient/lower cost shipping, better customer service, on and on and on). You don't get it right when you give and answer to a different question so to speak.


In the end it worked out against Enron and Tyco, but they lived high on the hog for awhile and the machine kept feeding the greed. The more the CEO's and CFO's worked and massaged the numbers the more investors went crazy for the stock and everyone finally did lose. And the people who lost the most were the tens of thousands who lost their jobs and made the mistake of trusting the CEO's to take care of the company. Hence this is what you get when you have a "poor" or unscrupulous CEO. A good one, might still have yeilded a failed business or not...but he/she wouldn't have illegally screwed people out of their life savings (hey...those employees WERE investors because they in fact OWNED stock)


Do you really think the people who were several years away from retiring and lost their entire retirement package and jobs really feel vindicated that those CEO's are in jail? I'm sure when they are 75 and still stuck working that will really help them pay their bills.I didn't say they were. Such is the RISK with investing...if those employees had simply NOT invested in enron, they wouldn't have lost their life savings...they would have lost their salary, sure. But they believed in the company, put their money where their mouth was, providing capital for the company to grow when it was failing the whole time.

Wise investing, and evryone knows this, is to not "put all your eggs in one basket". ESPECIALLY toward the end of your working years...because companies don't always suceed and stay in business. Those that took the risk, payed dearly.

But you point out Japanese companies producing cars in the US...hey, can you tell me the ONE thing those guys have that US car companies don't? If you said "profits", you'd be right!