Officers of a company get a lot more benefits than regular workers. For people who don't know about it, the amount of stock compensation they hold may come as a surprise. Do you want to know how much stock the CEO and other top executives of a certain company own? It's very easy to find out.
This is how to find out how many shares of stock an officer of a public company owns. Go to the NASDAQ website and type in the stock ticker symbol for the company you are interested in. Select "Flash Quotes." Choose "Insider Form 4" from the drop-down menu. Look down the list until you find the name of the company officer you want. Select that name. Go to the last date, which should be at the top of the list. Look at the column on the far right that says "holdings." That is the number of shares that officer owns and controls right now. If you multiply that number by the most recent stock price for the company, you can get a dollar amount.
This number will change from day to day, of course. You might be surprised by how large that number is. Think about how this is just the officer's stock holdings right now. It doesn't say how many shares he has sold in the past or how many shares the company will give him or her in the future.
When you look at these numbers, you might think they are amazing. If you are the CEO or an officer of a company, the numbers won't surprise you because you already know them. But if you work for a company that is owned by the public, you may wonder why your salary isn't the same as the officers' stock holdings.
"But the CEO and the other officers worked hard for their money," some people will say. And that might be the case. But did they really work harder every day than you did? And if they did, does the fact that they worked harder make up for the difference between what an average worker makes and how much stock a company officer owns? Most likely, the answer is "no."
This makes me think about how our economy works in some interesting ways. Serfdom isn't supposed to exist anymore, but does it? We now have a feudal way of running the economy. In place of the land and taxes that a monarch used to own and collect, corporate officers and owners now get paid in stock. But the person who does the work is the serf or worker. The benefits still go to the king or queen and his court.
Most likely, you won't be able to find the same information about private companies on the NASDAQ website as you can about public companies. I think it is good that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires that this information be made public. It's meant to be available to investors, of course. But if you have company stock through a 401(k) plan, you are an investor.
You can also find this information on the website of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in addition to the NASDAQ website. In fact, you can find a lot of information out there. Most of the time, it is easier to find on the NASDAQ website.
If you knew how much stock the company's officers had, you might be less afraid to ask for that raise you've been thinking about. A lot of the time, knowledge is power.
