Study lists largest pensions for CEOs
By Edward Iwata
USA Today
Amid growing concern over a wave of cutbacks in corporate pension plans for employees, the CEOs of top U.S. companies would receive "golden pensions" that range from $2 million to $6.5 million a year, according to a study by the AFL-CIO union federation.
The study, "CEO Golden Years: The top 25 Largest CEO Pensions," was done by the AFL-CIO and the Corporate Library, a corporate-governance research group.
Topping the list is Pfizer chief executive Hank McKinnell, whose estimated annual pension would be $6.5 million. No. 2 is recently retired ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, who also is at $6.5 million. AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre ranked third at $5.5 million.
According to the AFL-CIO, 69 percent of Fortune 1,000 CEOs are covered by traditional defined-benefit plans, while 21 percent of private-sector workers are covered by the plans.
"CEOs have turned their pension plans into CEO wealth-creation devices," says AFL-CIO investment researcher Brandon Rees. "This undermines the goal of linking CEO pay to performance, and in fact rewards underperformance."
Shareholders and corporate governance experts have scrutinized executives' pay since the 1980s. Now they're looking more closely at what they believe to be exorbitant CEO pension plans.
The AFL-CIO study comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission is soliciting public comments by Monday on a proposed rule to require better disclosure of CEO compensation, including retirement pay.
The study found:
Pfizer spokesman Paul Fitz-henry says that "Hank McKinnell has earned his pension benefits (over) 37 years of service to Pfizer as of the time of his retirement." Pfizer produced "outstanding shareholder returns" over several of those years.
In 2001, Pfizer's directors decided to no longer include stock grants in calculating pension pay, according to Fitzhenry.
ExxonMobil spokesman Russ Roberts says Raymond worked 43 years at the largest U.S. oil company and 12 years as CEO. "We're proud of the fact that we pay our employees well, they stay for quite a long time and have a good pension to show for it," he says.
Spokesman Mark Lindsay says McGuire took over the then-troubled firm in the early 1990s and turned it into what Fortune magazine has recognized as one of the most innovative and best-managed companies in America."
Its stock price has beaten the Standard & Poor's 500 and risen 1,060 percent since 1994, he says.
"That's a very clear record of superior performance," he says.
