TheoWire

US social-gaming company Zynga hasn’t just given its new chief executive a pay package worth as much as $100 million over five years. It has also structured the package in a way that could encourage him to try to sell the company sooner rather than later.

We recently told you about four companies ignoring their shareholders’ votes. One was Hecla Mining, a silver producer that held the polls open longer than planned when it looked like shareholders were going to reject management’s pay package.

The vote is only advisory, but Hecla’s stalling worked: Instead of failing 49.6% to 46.7%, the company’s say-on-pay vote passed with 53.7% of the vote.

When Wal-Mart Stores does a thing, it does it big. The stock buy-back it announced at its annual meeting today is no exception, at $15 billion, hot on the heels of an earlier $15-billion repurchase plan.

So it’s probably a good time to remember that stock buybacks generally aren’t the unparalleled good that they can seem at first glance.