
Amit Banati left a CFO job at a Fortune 500 company, signed a contract to become CEO of Fortune Brands Innovations, and then never officially worked a single day in the role. He walked away this week with $18.4 million in cash.
The epic payday, ostensibly to compensate Banati for what he left behind at his prior job, is the outcome of a remarkable, possibly absurd, confluence of today’s bumper executive compensation packages and activist investor campaigns.