Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi, Myles Udland, and Julie Hyman discuss U.S. executives’ bonuses and the record low support from investors.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: All right, welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live on this Monday morning. Well, as 2021 annual meetings have gotten underway, investors have gotten quite a surprise when they looked back at the pay packages that so many CEOs received during a time when tens of millions of folks were out of work. Brian Sozzi, Financial Times looking at this story over the weekend. And they note that there have now been 13 shareholder votes on executive pay packages that have failed.

And some executives, or some experts rather, think that that number could rise to as high as 20. Now there are thousands of public companies and thousands of annual shareholder meetings, so OK, you've got 20 executive pay packages not getting 50% approval from shareholders. But usually, there's about one objection, maybe two. And it suggests, I think, a little bit of the tide turning in terms of how investors and institutional investors, we really mean, view the compensation schemes for many executive classes.

BRIAN SOZZI: And it has to turn, Myles. It's long, long, long overdue. But as you mentioned, a very good story out of the FTC over the weekend. And the headline here is investor protests over executive pay have hit an all-time high. Last week, Halliburton was the 13th S&P 500 company to garner less than 50% support for a say on pay vote at its annual meeting. All of last year, there were only 12 no votes on say on pay. That's according to ISS Corporate Solutions, which tracks a lot of this stuff.

So these are, in fact, rising. And ultimately, let's call out two companies. I mean, Starbucks recently, its shareholders voted no on say on pay for its CEO, Kevin Johnson, who was potentially could still go reach $50 million plus in bonuses. That's a three-year retention bonus they're viewing it as. But shareholders said no. The thing is, these are non-binding votes, so it's likely a Johnson may still end up getting that bonus, along with the GE. GE CEO Larry Culp last year had his contract reworked, where now he stands to make $230 million in terms of bonus. It's just absolutely ridiculous.

And I come back to this stat here that "The New York Times" recently put it out. They're noting chief executives of big companies now make, on average, 320 times as much as their typical worker. And they are citing the Economic Policy Institute for that stat. In 1989, that ratio was 61:1. So CEOs have just gotten richer. And it's a tough sell, especially last year, as a lot of companies are canning workers. To see a GE coming out here potentially rewarding its CEO with a $230 million bonus, it's ridiculous.