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Shareholders in WPP, the world's biggest advertising company, voted on the firm's 2015 pay report on Wednesday, with several funds and advisers urging them to reject a 70 million pound ($102 million) pay package for CEO Martin Sorrell. By comparison, the highest paid CEO last year in the United States, where executive rewards tend to be larger, was Expedia's Dara Khosrowshahi, with a package of $95 million, according to the Equilar 200 Highest-Paid CEO Rankings. Following are some other high-profile CEO payouts in recent years:
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Apple's Tim Cook was given the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011, receiving a $376 million stock bonus. Apple said the retention of Cook, Job's long-time lieutenant, was crucial to its success. Jobs received just $1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he received a stock option that analysts said was valued at almost $600 million.
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Google's CEO Sundar Pichai, who took over in August 2015, received restricted stock worth about $199 million, according to a regulatory filing by Google parent company Alphabet Inc in February 2016.
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Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, said in April it would pay 12 current and former members of its management board a combined 63 million euros ($72 million) in fixed and flexible remuneration for 2015, a year in which the company admitted to cheating U.S. diesel emissions tests, throwing it into crisis. The company withheld part of bonus payments but will award them at a later date if certain performance criteria are met. The proposed payouts included 7.3 million euros for Martin Winterkorn, who stood down as CEO as a result of the scandal.
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General Electric's Jack Welch, long-standing CEO of the U.S. industrial group, received a severance payment worth $417 million when he retired in 2001. GE said this was in recognition of his 20 years of leadership, during which the company became the world's most valuable.
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Just two months into the job, BG Group CEO Helge Lund agreed to a takeover by Royal Dutch Shell in April 2015 which corporate filings showed would trigger payouts that could net him more than 32 million pounds ($48 million).
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Royal Bank of Scotland's former CEO Fred Goodwin agreed in 2009 to reduce his pension, widely criticised as excessive given the bank's near-collapse and bailout by British taxpayers in 2008. Goodwin, the architect of a string of deals that stretched the bank's finances in the run-up to the global financial crisis, saw his annual income cut to 342,500 pounds, down from 703,000 pounds when the award was first agreed.
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Some 59 percent of BP shareholders voted against CEO Bob Dudley's $20 million pay deal for 2015. Dudley's pay and benefits rose 20 percent even though the British oil company cut 5,000 jobs and reported its biggest ever annual loss. BP said its rewards were based on a combination of factors including cash generation and operational performance.
CEO payouts that sparked a storm: From WPP’s Martin Sorrell, Apple’s Tim Cook to Google’s Sundar Pichai
Shareholders in WPP, the world’s biggest advertising company, vote on the firm’s 2015 pay report on Wednesday, with several funds and advisers urging them to reject a 70 million pound ($102 million) pay package for CEO Martin Sorrell.
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