What is a hole in Italy is an ever-expanding abyss in the United States. We are not talking about geology, but about the distance that separates the paychecks of the boss from those of his subordinates.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, in the US an average CEO earns 295,9 times more than a normal employee (the data refers to 2013).
According to the last R&D Yearbook produced by the Mediobanca Research Department, on the other hand, an average worker of large Italian groups would have to work 36 years before reaching the amount collected in 2014 alone by the top managers of his own company.
As for the growth rate, the compensation of American CEOs shot up by 937% between 1978 and 2013, compared to +10,2% for mid-range workers.
The imbalance in the distribution of wealth has been a debated issue for years, but the attention on the subject has increased in the United States and numbers like the ones we have just mentioned are destined to multiply.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (the American Consob) announced Wednesday that from 2018, listed US companies will have to reveal the amount of the difference in economic treatment between top management and ordinary workers.
The measure, which was approved by the SEC with a majority (3-2), was part of the Dodd-Frank Act finalized in 2010 to reform Wall Street. The package of measures aimed at reducing companies' exposure to risk to prevent a crisis like the one in 2008 from repeating itself, but largely remained a dead letter, above all due to the fierce opposition of the Republicans and the US financial lobbies.
"The obligation of transparency in remuneration will give important information to investors and other market players," commented one of the commissioners of the SEC, the Democrat Kara Stein.
In fact, the new law will give investors greater possibilities for intervention when companies sign measures on the compensation of top managers. So far, only the most sensational examples have hit the news. For example when, last May, many JP Morgan shareholders voted against the $ 20 million compensation for CEO Jamie Dimon.
