fat cat

n. Slang

1. A wealthy and highly privileged person.
2. A wealthy person who is a heavy contributor to a political campaign.

A slang word used to describe executives who earn what many believe to be unreasonably high salaries and bonuses. These top executives also receive generous pensions and retirement packages, consisting of extra compensation not available to other company employees.

Investopedia Says:
This term conjures up the image of cats that consume more than an appropriate amount of food and become grossly overweight.

Publicly-traded companies are required to disclose the amount of compensation that their top five executives receive. As a result, companies have been under a lot of scrutiny for excessive executive compensation, especially in the face of floundering revenues.

A real-life example of a fat cat would be former Disney CEO, Michael Eisner. For a period of five years in the late 1990s, Eisner received over $737 million in compensation, despite the fact that the company's five-year net income shrank an average of 3.1% each year.

Related Links:
Make sure you assess whether a CEO has a stake in doing a good job for you, the shareholder. Lifting the Lid on CEO Compensation
Learn about how the way a company keeps its management in check can affect the bottom line. Governance Pays

Wealthy person who has become lazy living off the dividends and interest from investments. Fat cats also tend to be offered special treatment by brokers and other financial professionals because they have so much money and their accounts can therefore generate large fees and commissions.

A wealthy and privileged person, as in This neighborhood, with its million-dollar estates, is full of fat cats. This term originally meant "a rich contributor to a political campaign," and while this usage persists, it now is often applied more broadly, as in the example. [Colloquial; 1920s]

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - bagmand, der spytter i partikassen og trækker i trådene

Français (French)
n. - gros richard

Deutsch (German)
n. - (Slang) reich und einflussreich, Person mit politischem Einfluss, Neureicher

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (καθομ.) ματσωμένος, παραλής

Italiano (Italian)
riccone

Português (Portuguese)
n. - homem (m) muito rico, grande contribuidor de campanha política

Русский (Russian)
самодовольный богач

Español (Spanish)
n. - alguien muy rico o influyente

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - rik knös

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
有钱有势的人

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 有錢有勢的人

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 돈 많은 특권층 사람들, 세력가

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 大金持ち

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עשיר, מליין, איש-עסקים, עובד-מדינה או פוליטיקאי עשיר‬

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