West Des Moines, Iowa-Based Retirement Services Company Athene Holding Ltd's Top-Tier Executives Average Pay Raise Was a Completely Off-the-Charts 116.8% Per Year During the Most Recent 3 Years Since Its 2016 IPO

After the second Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate debate held in Detroit where Cory Booker was the standout performer, where several other non-top-tier candidates performed exceptionally well especially Steve Bullock and where most of the top-tier candidates stumbled, I now will turn my attention to the early primary States and start with Iowa.

The key issue to Iowa citizens should be the huge and continuing Income Inequality Expansion which is at the core of many critical problems the US faces.

Thus I will be doing research and making posts on the average pay raise per year that the Top-Tier Executives of the larger Iowa Companies were rewarded with in the past ten years.

The third Iowa Company I am addressing is Athene Holding Ltd.

From annual compensation information contained in Company Proxy Statements, 10-K and S-1 filings with the SEC, the chart at the very bottom below shows Athene Holding Ltd's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of two consecutive full years of employment for the most recent three years since its 2016 IPO. 

Athene Holding Ltd's Top-Tier Executive Average Pay Raise was a Completely Off-the-Charts 116.8% per year for the last three years, substantially higher than the other two Iowa Companies I have researched so far.

1. Athene Holding Ltd +116.8% per year for the past three years
2. Principal Financial Group +14.4% per year for the past ten years
3. Rockwell Collins +9.0% per year for the past ten years

The only highly effective US Government law enacted by either party in the past decade that has substantially reduced income inequality expansion is Obamacare and the political right is continually trying to repeal and replace it and three of the top four Democratic Presidential candidates now leading in the polls are effectively running as their principal issue to do in essence precisely the same thing ..... repeal and replace Obamacare ..... but to do it with either a pure or a version of Medicare For All.  The pure Medicare For All advocated by both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and which was co-sponsored in a US Senate bill by Kamala Harris is off-the-charts enormously expensive and would take up an enormous amount of wasted time with no positive result since it has no chance of getting passed legislatively.  Just given their near-sighted stance on Medicare For All, if the Democratic nominee is any of the three of them, it will be extremely difficult for any of them to beat Trump in the general election.  It is that simple. 

My objective is to get a better handle on just why the US and particularly here Iowa has such massive continuing Income Inequality Expansion ..... it appears to be predominantly about the relative long-term annual pay raise percentages for the executives of a Company vs the many non-executives employees of a Company, coupled with the stock price appreciation subsequent to the time the company executives were rewarded in their pay with stock equity compensation.

To fix Income Inequality driven mainly by Company and its Board of Director choices on Percentage Annual Pay Raises, the US Government should step in and pass wisely-designed, simple but effective Fair Pay Raise Income Inequality Narrowing Company tax incentives for rewarding non-executive employees with fair pay increases ..... the carrot ..... and Company tax disincentives for rewarding executive employees with clearly excessively high pay increases ..... the stick.  I am certain ..... it is simple math ..... that this tax proposal would be very effective in substantially reducing the huge income inequality expansion that has occurred for decades in annual percentage pay raises between company executives and the rest of the company employees. 

And the continuing annual net tax revenues raised by the US Government here should be set up in a separate fund to be used only for wise additional income inequality narrowing initiatives.  This fund should be run by an outside group made up entirely of minorities harmed the most by Income Inequality Expansion of the past decades  .....all women, all blacks, all Latinos, all other non-white people, all past and present union members, all LGBTQ, all non-employee contract workers and all middle and lower income people of all ages, including those retired.

Also, the US Government should require all US Corporate Boards to include at least one worker representative and to exclude any Company Executive.

	FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE
	Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec
Athene Holding Ltd	2018	2017		2017	2016		2016	2015
Top-Tier	Total	Total		Total	Total		Total	Total
Executive	Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp
	$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s
James Belardi CEO	4,275	4,073		4,073	8,472		8,472	1,501
William Wheeler President	4,441	4,648		4,648	4,052		N/A	N/A
Grant Kvalheim President USA	3,174	3,324		3,324	8,648		8,648	1,982
Martin Klein CFO	2,820	2,815		2,815	2,224		N/A	N/A
John Rhodes Chief Risk Officer	N/A	N/A
Frank Gillis CEO ALRe				2,150	5,061
Stephen Cernich Former EVP							N/A	N/A
Guy Smith President USA							N/A	N/A
Brenda Cushing Former CFO							N/A	N/A
Totals	14,710	14,860		17,010	28,457		17,120	3,483
Annual % Change vs Prior Year	-1.0%			-40.2%			391.5%
3 Year Average Per Year % Change		116.8%