You skipped the second part of my comment. Yes, senior execs at large publc companies--assuming they didn't do anything actually criminal or stupid related to their own finances--generally come out the other side OK. But sometimes a company can just reasonably get into a place it's hard to come out from. Kodak is a really good example IMO.
Maybe I'm expecting too much, but for me the only good reason a CEO is paid more than any actually useful employee of the company is to anticipate this kind of thing and use the money from their leadership position in the old tech to invest and not be in a very bad position with the new tech.
Sometimes companies just aren’t in a good position for historical reasons. Returning to Kodak you can’t really say to your investors and employees 90% of our existing business is toast and we’re going to churn everything over the next 5 years.
Sometimes you can do things more incrementally but other times it makes sense to basically close up shop and maybe shop your brand and some assets while keeping the biz afloat at some level with a lot of people still collecting a paycheck.
