Greed at a Glance
A weekly update on avarice in America and beyond

May 19, 2008

Oil companies don’t like high oil prices. That’s what James Mulva, the CEO of ConocoPhillips, told his shareholders last week in Houston. Declared Mulva: “High oil prices have not been our friend” — because, as he explained later to reporters, higher per-barrel prices for crude have resource-rich countries demanding more control over their own oil. What about oil company executives? Do they like high prices? Some observers suspect that, deep down, Mulva may not really mind them. He took home $50.5 million in 2007, according to federal Securities and Exchange Commission figures. The 61-year-old Mulva will be collecting at least a $2.6 million annual pension when he retires . . .

The super-rich in Russia and China have really arrived. The proof: Both nations now sport a fledgling luxury helicopter industry. In Moscow last week, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov opened a three-day “HeliRussia” exhibition that featured domestically manufactured helicopters outfitted, news reports noted, “with the same walnut parquetry, flat-screen televisions, and leather sofas favored by Middle Eastern heads of state.” In China, a Shanghai firm is partnering with Sikorsky, a top global copter maker, and has already collected over a dozen orders on sleek new whirlybirds. Still, the real luxury helicopter action remains elsewhere. In the UK, Sikorsky’s S-76 model is fetching $8 million a pop to buy and $5,000 an hour to charter. London power suits, the Guardian reports, seem to prefer charters. Notes PremiAir charter’s David Langton: “Companies these days use helicopters for any number of reasons. Once we flew to Scotland to pick up a dinner jacket someone had forgotten.”

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives last week agreed to tax the rich. A little. To pay for an expanded new education benefit for servicemen and women returning from the Iraq War, the House agreed to add a half-percentage point surcharge onto the tax bills of couples making over $1 million a year. That would mean a $2,500 hit on taxpayers making $2 million a year. Those taxpayers, says Rep. Mike Ross from Arkansas, are “not going to miss” those dollars. They’ll also not going to have to pay them. The Senate remains deadset against any tax increase on millionaires, and Capitol Hill observers, as things now stand, give the House surcharge zero chance of getting enacted . . .

The super-rich who happen to manage hedge funds have had a good May, and not just because the Senate is saving them from the tax-the-rich hordes in the House. Earlier this month, California officials dropped a proposal that would have subjected hedge funds based in the state to some minimal regulation. Hedge fund industry leaders had threatened a mass exodus if California did anything that might require hedge funds to register and open up their books to state inspection. The Connecticut state attorney general had tried and failed, in 2006, to put similar regulations in place. Last year, the nation’s top 50 hedge fund managers averaged $581 million each in income . . .

Mega millionaires and their legislative allies usually start fuming when anyone suggests capping outrageously high annual incomes. But not always. Deep pockets see nothing wrong with capping the incomes of trial lawyers who pull in big contingency fees winning lawsuits against corporate misbehavior. In Colorado, earlier this year, former state Senate leader Mark Hillman announced an effort to place a cap of trial lawyer contingency fees on next November’s ballot. That move didn’t exactly please state attorneys. The Colorado Trial Lawyers Association counterattacked with a ballot initiative campaign of its own that included a proposal to limit CEO pay— “to no more than 50 times” the pay that goes to a company’s lowest-paid worker. This CEO pay limit proposal would have been the first in U.S. history ever to go directly before voters. Unfortunately, Colorado corporate interests have apparently decided they’re not quite ready yet to put CEO pay up for a vote. After quickly arranged “peace talks” between the Hillman crowd and the trial lawyers, both sides earlier this month agreed to end their pay-limiting ballot initiative campaigns.

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