Transocean, the offshore drilling firm that ran the Deepwater Horizon rig, has given its top execs massive bonuses for having “the best year in safety performance in our company's history.”
Seriously. Here’s what the annual report says: “Yeah, some people died and some animals died and some livelihoods were ruined, but that was only April through July. On average we did pretty good. Here is a suit made of money and a hat made of money.”
Okay, they put it a little nicer:
Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate.
Actually? That’s barely nicer at all. At least throw in some marketing jargon if you’re going to be all “yeah yeah death and destruction.”
Transocean said that executives would be getting a 3.8 percent raise, millions in stock options, and a cash bonus of 44.8 percent of their “target bonus opportunity.” What’s that mean? Well, for the CEO (who’s not getting a bonus, having just gotten a promotion and a raise), “target bonus opportunity” would be his full annual salary of $900,000, so he would be getting over $400,000. That’s enough to upgrade his brass balls!
