The Staples NOligarchy Profile
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Staples earned a NOligarchy Score of 69.06 out of 100 — a result shaped by a clean political footprint at one end, and a stark pay gap estimate and a documented $1 billion cash extraction at the other. A small but newly recorded regulatory penalty nudges the score down from the previous cycle. As a private company, Staples is shielded from many of the disclosure requirements that apply to publicly traded corporations, which means large portions of its financial behavior simply cannot be verified from the outside.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
97.9
Wealth Extraction
23.5
Playing by the Rules
100.0
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 97.86/100. Nearly perfect — the public record shows zero federal lobbying dollars spent and no Political Action Committee (PAC) activity from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). A trace amount of executive personal campaign contributions does appear in Federal Election Commission (FEC) records — just $50 — which nudges the score fractionally below perfect. No revolving-door hires appear in the filings.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 23.44/100. The lowest of the three pillars. A documented $1 billion dividend recapitalization that Sycamore Partners pulled out of Staples in 2019, combined with an estimated CEO pay gap of 536:1, drives this score sharply downward. No stock buyback or dividend data is available in the public record beyond the recapitalization event, a direct consequence of Staples’ private ownership.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 74.11/100. A small volume of regulatory penalties — $18,560 in total — appears in the public record for the two-year period, ending the perfect compliance score from the previous cycle. The amount is negligible relative to company revenue, but it is no longer zero.
Staples ranks 2nd out of 2 among companies sharing its federal industry classification, Office Supplies, Stationery, and Gift Retailers. The sector average score is 71.1 — Staples sits just below that baseline at 69.1. The caveat is real: a two-company sector is a narrow measuring stick.
The Bottom Line: A Billion Dollars Out the Door, a Pay Gap Nobody Can Confirm
Staples reported $6.33 billion in annual revenue, yet as a private company it publishes none of the financial disclosures that would reveal how its profits are divided between owners and workers. What the record does show is stark: Sycamore Partners — the private equity firm that owns Staples — pulled $1 billion out of the company in a single dividend recapitalization in 2019, documented in public reporting. The best available estimate puts the CEO earning 536 times what a typical Staples worker takes home. Against that backdrop, $18,560 in regulatory penalties is essentially a rounding error — the kind of figure that confirms the compliance machinery is running, but raises no real accountability pressure on a company this size.
No Footprint in Washington
For the full period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, Staples spent nothing on federal lobbying and operated no PAC. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings return empty. One Staples executive made a single $50 personal campaign contribution in Q3 2024 — the only political dollar traceable to the company in the entire period, per FEC records.
This is notable for a company of its size. Staples operates in a sector directly touched by federal procurement policy — the government is one of the largest bulk buyers of office supplies in the country. Companies in this space often lobby on contract rules, small-business set-aside regulations, and labor standards. Staples chose to sit all of that out, at least on the federal stage. No revolving-door hires appear in the record, meaning no former government insiders were brought in to work the halls of Congress.
The near-absence of a lobbying footprint is a genuine accountability positive. It is also worth noting that private companies face fewer pressures to engage in public-facing political spending — their influence, if any, is simply less visible.
A Billion Extracted, a Pay Gap Nobody Can Confirm
Staples is not required to publicly disclose its CEO pay ratio. The best available figure is 536:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector, per AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch. The actual ratio is not confirmed by any company filing; the gap in transparency is itself the accountability problem.
The sharper story sits behind the ownership structure. In April 2019, Sycamore Partners orchestrated a $1 billion dividend recapitalization, as reported by Axios. A dividend recapitalization works like this: the company takes on new debt, then immediately hands the borrowed cash to its private equity owners as a dividend. The company carries the debt; the owners pocket the cash. Workers are not a factor in that calculation. Because Staples is privately held, no public filing breaks down what that $1 billion extraction cost the company in interest burden, workforce investment foregone, or store-level resources. That is precisely the accountability gap private ownership creates.
No additional stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for Staples in the public record beyond this event.
Penalties That Round to Zero
The two-year period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 closed with $18,560 in total regulatory penalties recorded against Staples — a figure so small relative to $6.33 billion in annual revenue that it amounts to 0.0003% of sales. No detailed case breakdowns are available in the public record for this period, so the nature and agency source of those penalties cannot be confirmed here.
What that number does confirm is that Staples’ exposure to enforcement action over this tracking period was essentially negligible. For a retailer operating locations where workers handle heavy equipment and warehouse stock, the absence of significant safety or labor penalties is worth acknowledging. At the same time, $18,560 is the kind of sum that requires no strategic response from a company this size — it lands as a cost of doing business rather than a meaningful check on conduct.