Bad Corporate Behavior


Unbridled Greed At Liberty Mutual Steals From Insured Victims

The Boston Globe (4/12/12) reported that former Liberty Mutual Chairman Edmund Kelly "earned close to $50 million a year from 2008-2010" and was paid "a similar amount" in 2011 when he retired as CEO. The revelation that Liberty Mutual paid Kelly about $200 million over four years angered customers. Liberty Mutual, which is required to report executive pay to state regulators once a year, omitted reporting Kelly's 2011 pay.

The Boston Globe (4/20/12) reported that Nancy Geiser, a retired social worker and 27-year customer having auto and home insurance policies, was outraged over Kelly's pay and stated: "This self-serving, greedy compensation plan is way out of line.''

The Boston Globe article described how "Kelly's pay has become controversial because of its size and because Liberty Mutual is mutually owned by its policy holders so any surplus profits are supposed to go back to customers as dividends or be reinvested in the company... Liberty Mutual has raised rates for many customers in recent years. Russell Mason, who bought a home and auto policy from Liberty Mutual, said he was already irked that the insurer increased his rates. Mason said his auto premium rose 22 percent and his home insurance premium 18 percent during the past three years. But Mason said he was positively steaming after reading about Kelly's pay package...

"The pay package also irked some government watchdogs because Liberty Mutual received $46.5 million in state and local tax incentives [aka corporate welfare] in 2010 to build an office tower...In addition to state aid, the city of Boston chipped in a local property tax break worth as much as $24 million over 20 years. Dot Joyce, spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said the tax break made sense at the time because the firm was threatening to move the jobs to Dover, N.H...."

Hypocritical Ads By Liberty Mutual Ring Hollow

During coverage of the London Olympics, Liberty Mutual developed a series of ads with the tagline: "Responsibility. What's your policy?" This tagline, according to an article by the Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association, is a promise Liberty Mutual is making to its policyholders. "When your bathtub overflows or your car door gets snapped off, your responsible insurance agency will be there to help make things right again...

An article about the commercials that appeared in ADWEEK included a quote from Liberty Mutual Personal Insurance CMO, Jim MacPhee, who stated that the company wished to convey "our empathy toward policyholders in times when they need us"...

In a recent conversation with a Liberty Mutual "SR Claims Specialist 1," Ms. Harris was told that the offers of $35,000-$45,000 to settle any claims for her Yum! Brands/Pizza Hut (Redberry Brands International) injury was what "We offer those who live in the Detroit area!" One has to wonder what Liberty Mutual would offer an affluent victim in Ms. Harris' situation who resides in Troy, Michigan or Beverly Hills, California!

Ask Liberty Mutual: Where is your "empathy and responsibility" when you offer personal injury victim Cheryl Harris a pittance ($35,000-$45,000) to cover the loss of her left hand index finger tip (Ms. Harris is left handed), the trauma and ongoing pain she suffers and her ongoing medical bills!

Compensation for David Long, CEO & Chairman of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, was $20 million in 2017.

Yum! Brands Ranks High on America's Greediest List

Yum! Brands CEO, Greg Creed, according to the company's 2017 proxy statement was paid $15.4 million in 2016 and owns 551,208 shares of Yum! Brands stock valued at more than $43 million on November 24, 2017.

Inequality.org (12/17/13), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, listed Yum! Brands as #2 on its list of "America's Greediest: The 2013 Top Ten." Former CEO David Novak pocketed $94 million in "performance pay" for 2011 and 2012. At the same time, Yum raked in tens of millions of dollars in government tax subsidies (corporate welfare). Yum was allowed to deduct executive "performance" pay off their taxable income saving Yum $33 million over two years.

Even worse, Inequality.org points out, average Americans are actually subsidizing Yum and its CEOs at much higher levels than this single tax break. Taxpayers are subsidizing Yum's entire fast-food business.

"Workers at fast food giants like Yum simply don't make enough to make ends meet for their families. So how do these workers get by? They depend on taxpayer-financed social safety net programs, from food stamps to Medicaid.

"Overall, researchers noted in 2013, American taxpayers "are spending nearly $7 billion a year to supplement the wages of fast-food workers.

"And how are fast-food executives like [former CEO] David Novak spending the profits this generous taxpayer support makes possible? They're having their companies, for starters, buy back shares of company stock off the open market, a strategy designed solely to bump up their share prices.

"Higher share prices, in the meantime, produce higher "performance pay" awards for execs like Novak. If Novak had plowed the vast millions that Yum spent last year on share buybacks into worker pay, estimate researchers from Demos, worker wages at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC would have jumped by as much as $3 per hour."

Yum! Brands CEO, Greg Creed, according to the company's 2016 proxy statement was paid $7.5 million in 2015 and owns 429,202 shares of Yum! Brands stock valued at more than $28.3 million on January 27, 2017.

Yum! Brands: "Dysfunctional Environment...Executive Leaders with Misogynistic and Sexist Tendencies."

A November 2016 review of Yum concluded that the company is "Unpredictable and unstable for mid level employees." It has a "Dysfunctional environment with frequent corporate restructuring." and "Generally old-fashioned executive leaders with misogynistic and sexist tendencies."

Yum! Brands Have No Compassion for Animal Welfare

The Washington Post (11/9/15) reported that "All of the brands belonging to Yum! Brands, the parent company which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, were given an F grade in a recent report by six organizations, including the Consumers Union and Center for Food Safety, on industry sourcing practices" with respect to animal welfare and use of antibiotics and hormones in its animal supply chain. "What's more, it has made no clear promises to fix that..."

"When you look at the major fast food brands, Taco Bell really stands out," said Leah Garces, who is the U.S. director of Compassion in World Farming, an animal rights group. "They're the only big player in the United States that doesn't have plans to change how it sources its food."

"The reality is that animal welfare, broadly speaking, has become something that people care about, and companies have moved to honor. It's something you have to do...That is, unless you are Taco Bell, Pizza Hut or KFC."

Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken Equates to Unhealthy Chicken

Fortune reported that activists filed a shareholder proposal requesting that Yum Brands "quickly phase out harmful antibiotic use in its meat supply, taking aim at the practices of the company's KFC fried chicken chain...Critics say the stated policy at KFC effectively allows for routine use of antibiotics by its chicken suppliers." Such use of antibiotics is recognized as a cause fueling the rise of dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria called "superbugs."

The Street (8/10/16) reported: "Medical experts caution that the routine use of antibiotics for growth promotion and to prevent illness in farm animals has contributed to an increase in drug-resistant "superbug" infections that kill about 23,000 Americans each year, in addition to being labeled as a "catastrophic threat" to global health, Reuters noted."

Kentucky Fried Chicken competitors Chick-fil-a, McDonald's, Subway and Wendy's have already set "policies to curb the routine use of antibiotics in chicken production."

Yum! Brands Destroying Rain Forests & Threatening Endangered Tigers

TheStar.com (5/23/12) reported: "Yum! Brands, the owner of KFC, is blazing a trail of destruction through Indonesian rain forests, chopping down trees and threatening endangered Sumatran tigers to produce its signature crispy chicken buckets, according to Greenpeace International."

In a report, How KFC is Junking the Jungle, Greenpeace says it found evidence that Yum uses rainforest wood to produce its fast food chain's packaging. "Unlike a number of other major international companies, KFC and Yum! have no sustainability policies to exclude commodities connected to rainforest destruction. In fact, the group has consistently failed to even answer questions about its sourcing of products such as palm oil, soya and paper products..."