Sands chairman Adelson receives 400 percent raise
Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson has signed a new employment agreement that gives him a 400 percent raise and the highest salary among S&P 500 chief executives.
Under the agreement, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Adelson will receive an annual base salary of $5 million and will be eligible for an annual cash bonus of up to $12.5 million based on the company’s cash-flow performance.
Adelson also can receive an annual stock option grant to purchase Sands common stock
ADELSON
Yorkers and others, he said, but in the northern part of the state, “you’re going into Klan country.”
He moved to Las Vegas in 1960. “I didn’t have a covered wagon, but moving here was my pioneer adventure.”
He became friends with former boxing champ Jackie Fields and dated a Copa Room dancer, a blonde with a beehive who “had been involved with some mobsters and was in some movies.”
As for Las Vegas’ mafia days: “You knew what was going on. If you didn’t know, you were stupid.” He never took a payoff, he said, and some people in town “might say I’m
a bastard, I’m tough, this or that, but I’m honest. I’ve never cheated anybody, and I’ve never lied to anybody.”
He also demolished his Somerset House Motel because, he explained: “Money was going out, not going in.”
His daughter Joanna Kishner, a Clark County District Court judge, told me on Friday that her dad’s shopping center was “a vibrant part of the community” with a pizza parlor, a grocery and a tavern. It also has potential for redevelopment, she added.
Sharon Kishner, a former disability-rights attorney and now an advocate for the mentally ill, said the plaza used to be “completely full.”
Workers at the pharmacy there “knew everyone on a first-name basis,” she said, and her dad was
“devastated” when it closed after a national drugstore opened on the Strip. (A Walgreens is just down the street from the plaza, at the corner of Convention Center Drive and Las Vegas Boulevard.)
Irwin worked into his 80s, and even though he wasn’t as mobile in the past year, he still conducted a lot of business from home, said Sharon, who lives in Portland, Oregon.
She went to her dad’s office on Thursday to get awards from the walls to bring to his memorial service. Besides those items, the office hadn’t been boxed up.
“It looks as if it’s ready for him to walk in tomorrow,” she said.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.