By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg's choice for schools chancellor, Cathie Black, is making watchdog groups nervous with her free-spending ways as a member of Coca-Cola's board of directors, the New York Daily News reported.
For nine of the 17 years Black has sat on the soda company’s board, she has sat on the Compensation Committee, which doles out what critics consider to be inflated salaries, over-the-top bonuses, and bogus buyout deals, the paper wrote.
The mayor has come out in strong support of Black, but people say that the compensation that she has given out in recent years to Coke execs isn't justified by the company's less-than-stellar performance as compared to its rivals, the News wrote.
"Cathie Black had the highest level of responsibility for making responsible compensation recommendations to Coke's board," Brandon Rees, deputy director of the AFL-CIO's Office of Investment, told the paper. "She failed to take advantage of it."
Black makes nearly $200,000 for her part-time position on Coca-Cola’s board, and another $300,000 for a part-time post on the board of IBM, the paper wrote.
The company pays CEO Muhtar Kent a whopping $18.8 million, which includes such perks as chauffeurs, jets, insurance, a home security system, and financial planning for Kent’s tax returns, according to the News.
In a summer 2008 letter that Black wrote to Kent, she outlined some of these perks, including use of the corporate jet.
"You are required...to travel exclusively on company aircraft both for business and personal travel," the letter read, according to the paper.
"It is also appropriate that your spouse and immediate family travel on company aircraft when accompanying you."
In 2009, the Corporate Library, a research firm that rates companies' boards on the topic of executive pay, lowered the Coca-Cola Company's rating from a D to an F, the Daily News said.
The firm noted the "entrenched" nature of Coke's board, calling attention to the fact that half of the board’s 14 members had served for longer than 15 years, the paper wrote.
"All this raises concerns about board entrenchment, independence and commitment," the News quoted the Corporate Library as having written.
