A Sprint spokesman says the payoff is justified by the big profits all Sprint holders have made–$100 invested in Sprint five years ago is worth $580, he says, compared with $300 for the S&P 500 and $200 for AT&T. And, he says, Esrey spent 15 years as chief executive building Sprint: “It’s not as if he fell from the sky, spent a year here and then sold the company.”
All true. But the package is still staggering. Note that we’re not including Esrey’s severance pay even though his tenure as chairman of the new company is expected to be brief. At $673 million, why bother with a rounding error?
