"PERFUMED PRINCES"

That is a phrase of contempt used by David Hackworth to describe the higher brass. It seems that it also applies to the boardroom:

Executives Cash In, Regardless of Performance
By Ben White and Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 22, 2005; Page E01

"Even though the escalation of pay has often been justified as necessary, when you look at the details, that is not the case, because much of the pay is not all that sensitive to performance," said Harvard Law School professor Lucian A. Bebchuk, author of the new book "Pay Without Performance." "Our view is that pay is much less connected to performance than investors commonly recognize," he said.
Between 1993 and 2002, total compensation paid by all public companies to their top five executives was $260 billion, according to a study by Bebchuk and Cornell University professor Yaniv Grinstein. From 1993 to 1997, executive pay amounted to 6 percent of total corporate profit, the study said. That number increased to 10 percent of aggregate corporate profit from 1998 to 2002.