AT&T Inc chairman and chief executive Edward Whitacre will retire with a US$158.5 million payout, figures released from a corporate watchdog group showed on Friday.
Whitacre's retirement was announced on Friday by the US telecommunications giant.
He will be replaced by Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief operating officer, on June 3.
The retirement was announced at a shareholders' meeting in San Antonio, Texas. But the pay package was revealed in documents sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in late March, according to the Corporate Library, a research group focusing on corporate governance.
The group said its calculations showed the payout was the third largest retirement package in US corporate history after the US$351 million awarded to departing ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond in 2005 and the US$202 million payout to Richard Handler, the former head of Wall Street firm Jefferies & Co.
The retirement pay includes a number of components for Whitacre, who will remain a consultant to AT&T over the next three years. It includes the use of a company jet, automobile and medical care.
Some shareholders had asked for cutbacks to the package at Friday's gathering.
According to AT&T, Whitacre, 65, led a "transformation of the smallest `Baby Bell' into the world's largest communications company and reshaped the company and the industry during a period of rapid technological change."
The Texas-born Whitacre, an engineer by training, has led the company for the past 17 years.
He took over in 1990 when the firm was known as Southwestern Bell, one of the "Baby Bells" created from the antitrust breakup in the 1980s of American Telephone and Telegraph.
Through a series of mergers, Southwestern Bell became known as SBC and eventually bought its former parent, AT&T, which had been designated a long-distance calling company after the breakup.
The news came amid a growing outcry over extravagant pay packages for US corporate executives, which has moved from boardrooms to Congress and now even to the White House and US President George W. Bush.
Some lawmakers have called for more transparency and limits on executive pay. Bush, in a visit to Wall Street in February, urged corporate boards to tie lavish pay and bonuses to job performance.
Some analysts say that even though US executives are often paid more than their counterparts at other multinational firms, they deliver more to shareholders as well.
A survey by the consultancy Watson Wyatt found some correlation between better performing companies and chief executive compensation.
Jeff Kagan, a telecom industry analyst, said Whitacre was a key figure in transforming the telecom industry.
"I don't normally comment on pay," Kagan said. "But we have to remember, he has transformed the company from the smallest of the Baby Bells to the largest competitor in the industry. That is an amazing accomplishment."
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