Perks A Plenty For CEOs Last Year | Companies offer stock options, air travel and commuting expenses
Image/Gannett Graphics
What can a big corporation offer the CEO who has everything? Judging from SEC filings for companies based in the local area, a lot. There are private jets, $1,800 annual physicals and huge insurance payments. Not to mention stock options, severance payments and plenty of other ways to spell more money.
Here’s just a small sample of what perks local execs received in 2007:
(High) Life After Retirement
At Sepracor Inc. in Marlborough, Timothy J. Barberich continues to rake in some serious cash despite retiring in March of 2007. He served as executive chairman until May 2008 and received a salary of $914,375 for 2007. That’s actually more than his 2006 salary, though his total compensation dropped from $7.97 million to a measly $4.95 million.
Even after leaving the Sepracor, Barberich remains an advisor to the company, pulling in $1.65 million a year through the end of 2009. His retirement agreement also gave him 47,500 shares of the company’s stock.
Apparently the pharmaceutical company is generous with its new hires as well. Andrew I. Koven, who became executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary in March 2007, got a $60,000 automobile allowance. The company said it anticipates offering a similar perk to its other top executives in 2008.
The climate was also good for a new hire at another Marlborough company, Evergreen Solar Inc. Michael El-Hillow received a stock grant worth $380,943 when he joined the company in January 2007 as CFO and secretary. That’s more than the stock that other company executives received for the year, and it brought his total compensation to more than $1 million.
David L. Brown, president and CEO of National Dentx Corp. in Wayland, didn’t set any records with a total compensation package worth $599,447, but the portion of that total devoted to life insurance may have broken new ground. The company paid $147,822, nearly a quarter of Brown’s compensation, for life insurance premiums.
Jet Set
Perks at EMC Corp. in Hopkinton included $187,074 for CEO Joesph M. Tucci’s air travel and more than $4,000 each for several execs to get annual physical exams and bring spouses or guests to company events. EMC also relieved the executives of the need to pay taxes on those perks by offering “tax gross-ups,” though the company said it will stop that practice in 2008.
BJ’s Wholesale Club in Natick gave CEO Herbert J Zarkin a total compensation package worth $8.1 million. That includes $762,299 in “commuting expenses.”
As the SEC statement explains, “In March 2007, the Board of Directors adopted a policy requiring, to the extent practical, that Mr. Zarkin travel by private aircraft on business and personal matters to improve security, efficiency and productivity. Accordingly, BJ’s provides Mr. Zarkin the use of jet aircraft...”
Meanwhile, at L.S. Starrett Co. of Athol, executives aren’t in danger of heading for the poorhouse, but the SEC filings have a decidedly more down-to-earth feel. The company, which brought in the 11th highest revenues of any Central Massachusetts company in 2007, paid CEO Douglas A. Starrett a total of $413,021. The next-highest executive compensation was $212,606. The company’s SEC filings take pains to note that a $1,231 stock award paid to Starrett was a length of service award that is “available to all employees on the same basis.” Elsewhere in its filings, the company says that it doesn’t offer executive benefits “such as club memberships or access to company-paid professional services that are not uniformly available to non-executive officer employees of the company.”
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments