It's a Sad Affair

By Jeff Simpson

When Corporations have higher standards than our Government!



Johnson Controls CEO, Alex Molinaroli, recently had an affair with one of Johnson Controls consultants.   The information became public in court records of his divorce from his wife of 28 years.  

This led to a conflict of interest and ethics violations for the CEO who had a total compensation package of $19.5 Million/yr.   After an internal investigation, they did find that Mr. Molinaroli did violate the company's ethics policy.

Tuesday's filing marked the first time that the company had announced that its executive committee found that Molinaroli had violated the Johnson Controls ethics policy, which required him "to timely alert the Audit Committee to a situation that could be perceived to raise issues of conflict of interest," the filing says.

After the investigation, they ended up reducing his compensation by $1,000,000 and firing the consultant.

As a result, the compensation committee of the board reduced Molinaroli's annual incentive performance payment program by 20%. His performance payment was $3.9 million, which the filing says is 20% or $1 million below the maximum payment of $4.9 million that he could have received for his performance last year.
The proxy statement said the board decided to terminate its long-term engagement with Ihle's firm, Lichter & Ihle, "in light of the nature of the work performed by the outside consulting firm for the company and to avoid any perception of conflicts or potential future conflicts.

 If only our elected officials had such an ethics code they had to live up to!