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Bill Gates Says Executive Pay Is Often Too High

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by John Cook
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Nov 12 2009 3:15pm EDT

Bill Gates Says Executive Pay Is Often Too High

TechFlash reports: The world's richest man thinks that Wall Street executives often get paid too much. In remarks made yesterday in New York, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said that executive pay is "often too high."

But the multibillionaire also cautioned against controlling executive salaries, citing the 1993 U.S. law that capped exec salaries at $1 million as "a bad milestone," Reuters reports.

"The compensation problem is a very interesting problem. I do think compensation is often too high, but it's a very tough problem to solve," said Gates.

Forbes recently placed Gates' wealth at $40 billion, despite losing an estimated $18 billion over the past 12 months.

Gates also warned against the government owning financial institutions like AIG, calling it an "unnatural situation when the government owns a lot of a private company" because it devalues the entity.

John Cook is executive editor of the Puget Sound Business Journal's TechFlash blog.

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