ABSTRACT
When Dean Buntrock took over his in-laws’ small trash-collection business in 1956, the company operated 15 trucks and earned $750,000 of annual revenues. Forty years later, WMX Technologies (WMX or Waste Management) was the largest waste disposal organization in the world with operations in 21 countries and revenues approaching $10 billion. Buntrock made far more money hauling trash than he was ever likely to
have earned in his previous job selling insurance. His $12.3 million of total compensation in 1990 ranked fourth highest among American CEOs, according to Business Week magazine.1 Buntrock’s salary and $150 million of stock holdings allowed him to pursue interests ranging from art collecting to big game hunting. He served as a director of Chicago’s prestigious Terra Museum of American Art. An Alaskan brown bear and a Canadian grizzly, trophies from two of Buntrock’s many hunting expeditions, guarded the hallway to WMX’s executive offices. Buntrock won praise as a philanthropist in February 1997 by donating
$26 million to St. Olaf College for construction of Buntrock Commons, a state-of-the-art facility housing a bookstore, theater, game rooms, dining facilities, and three ballrooms. Twelve months later, Buntrock earned notoriety of a different sort when
WMX announced a pretax charge of $3.5 billion and recalled its 1992 through 1996 financial statements. At the time, it was the largest earnings restatement in U.S. history.
