$44 Million Dollars for basically showing up to work for half a day and quitting.

Congratulations William Johnson. Give yourself a pat on the back.

(but can we just acknowledge how I didn’t even have to put his picture up but you already knew that’s EXACTLY what he looked like?! I mean damn.)

In an apparent corporate coup, Duke Energy, an electric power holding company that recently merged with Progress Energy, appears to have reneged on the spirit of its merger agreement with Progress, the Los Angeles Times reports. The merger agreement stipulated that the new company would have Progress’ William Johnson as chief executive and Duke’s James Rogers as executive chairman, according to The New York Times.

But within hours of the merger’s completion and installation of Johnson as CEO of the combined company, the board of directors asked for Johnson’s resignation and installed Rogers as the combined company’s CEO. For the mere day he served as CEO, Johnson was provided a compensation package which included $44 million, Forbes reports.

(source)

This is what we know:
—Duke and Progress said “hey let’s get together.”
—Duke says “We gotta keep James though” and Progress says “We gotta keep Bill too.”
—Dukegress keeps them both, but then fires Bill and gives him $44 million for giving up his CEO spot.

This is what we can hypothesize:
—Bill was either not feeling his old job or not feeling his upcoming job.
—Duke was not feeling Bill either, but their hands were tied since Progress wouldn’t merge without him.
—Bill says to Duke “hey, we can make everybody happy here. I’ll take the job, but then leave real quick so you can let James run everything, but I get the full severance of a CEO. I get money and you still get the merger.”
—Duke says “Okay that’s cool.”

And that is why rich people is rich. Cause they some naaaasssssty ol scumbags who cannot be trusted. What a fancy coincidence that just yesterday Reuters had an article reporting that a whole quarter of Wall Street executives feel some level of dishonesty is necessary for them to do their jobs.

IE, they need to lie to make money.

While I’m over here pinching my honest little pennies getting excited when the fancy cheese goes on sale at Whole Foods.