Many of the most interesting nuggets on executive pay are buried so deep in the new corporate filings that it helps to bring along a calculator and a shovel.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission's new disclosure rules were supposed to make it easier for investors to understand how top managers were being paid. But piles of new data and proxy statements that are about as easy to parse as the federal tax code have even experts scratching their heads.
"There is an awful lot of stuff you have to wade through to get to the stuff that matters," said Jannice Koors, a compensation consultant at Pearl Meyer & Partners. "We are now in the business of data mining."
Among the choice details recently unearthed in recent filings:
Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum's chairman and chief executive, is so far the highest paid corporate chief whose compensation package was tallied under the new rules.
Irani's total pay was about US$52.1 million last year, according to an analysis by Equilar, the executive compensation research firm. But that was just the amount that Occidental's board awarded him last year.
Stocks and options
In fact, Irani took home a lot more. First, there was the US$270.1 million in profit from stock options he cashed out last year. Then there was the US$93.3 million that Irani withdrew from a huge deferred stock plan that was revealed for the first time this year under the new rules.
(It is found in a table on page 28 of the Occidental proxy statement, in the kind of fine print often used by credit card and insurance companies.)
According to its proxy statement, the company ended the program late last year in light of the substantial "liability and expense" of the program.
Of course, Irani can expect even more money down the road. Besides his annual pay, he still can tap at least four other deferred compensation plans, totaling at least US$124 million.
IBM will freeze this year an executive retention plan that helped bolster retirement benefits for Samuel Palmisano, its chairman and chief executive, to more than US$33 million. On top of his US$18.8 million pension, Palmisano is eligible to collect about US$14.2 million through a special retention plan.
In its proxy statement, IBM said that it set up the program in 1995 to kee senior managers when the company's "very existence" was at risk, but that the "original purpose had been met."
Buried
Buried in the proxy of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer were details about more than the money it pays its board members and top executives. The company also took the unusual step of disclosing its independent compensation consultant's compensation.
"The total amount of fees paid to Frederic W. Cook & Co for services to the committee in 2006 was US$184,555," Pfizer's proxy revealed.
That works out to at least US$15,000 a month just so the company can be certain that the wages and benefits of its top executives are well designed and competitive.
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