Golden parachute
agreement providing significant compensation to a business executive who is fired, such as due to a merger
A golden parachute is an agreement between a company and an employee (usually an upper executive) specifying that the employee will receive certain significant benefits if employment is terminated. These may include severance pay, cash bonuses, stock options, or other benefits. Most definitions specify the employment termination is as a result of a merger or takeover, also known as "change-in-control benefits", but more recently the term has been used to describe perceived excessive CEO (and other executive) severance packages unrelated to change in ownership (also known as a golden handshake).
History
The first use of the term "golden parachute" is credited to a 1961 attempt by creditors to oust Howard Hughes from control of Trans World Airlines. The creditors provided Charles C. Tillinghast Jr. an employment contract that included a clause that would pay him money if he lost his job.
The use of golden parachutes expanded greatly in the early 1980s in response to the large increase in the number of takeovers and mergers. American executive pay practices were subject to increasing public scrutiny in the 1980s. During the 1980s hostile takeover wave, the practice of using golden parachutes in an executive's compensation package began to spread rapidly. By 1981, some 15% of the 250 largest U.S. corporations had golden parachutes in place.
“Golden parachute” enters the record as agreement providing significant compensation to a business executive who is fired, such as due to a merger. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Golden, parachute and agreement can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q465778. The first chronological checks are 1961 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Golden parachute” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.