June 15, 2017
A Farewell to Bud Crystal
– Broc Romanek
Recently, Bud Crystal sadly passed away. Bud was the first superstar in the compensation consulting industry. A dynamic person, he really knew how to relate to others. After his iconic career as a consultant, Bud did a 360 & became a vocal critic of outsize pay packages. Here’s an excerpt from this Bloomberg article:
“My switch from henchman to gadfly incensed many CEOs, some of whom called me a Judas and asked where they should deliver the 30 pieces of silver,” Crystal wrote in a 1996 article for Slate.com. “In a sense, though, those CEOs and I were operating on the same wavelength. They were quoting from the Bible, while I was beginning to think seriously about the need to save my immortal soul.”
For more than four decades, Crystal made a good but quiet living advising clients such as American Express Co. and General Electric Co. But once a critic, he found himself in the middle of controversies such as the alleged excesses of the employment contract that he helped Walt Disney Co. negotiate with Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz.