In a successful year when Jacksonville companies were generally profitable, the chief executive officers of those companies actually earned less in 2014 than they did in 2013.
The CEOs who had been on the job for two full years, in sum, saw their compensation packages drop by 11 percent last year.
The list includes all Jacksonville-area companies that file financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including two that are not publicly traded but file reports because of publicly issued bonds: ADS Waste Holdings Inc. (parent of Advanced Disposal) and Interline Brands Inc.
The CEOs of ADS and Interline were actually two of only three CEOs who had significant increases in pay last year and without their compensation packages, the total pay for publicly traded CEOs actually fell by 13 percent.
The chart shows the annual salary each CEO received and the total of other cash bonuses or incentive payments.
The total compensation includes those cash payments plus the estimated value of stock and stock option awards and other non-cash benefits they may have received.
The change represents the increase or decrease in total compensation package for each executive last year.
The drop in pay for Jacksonville CEOs is unusual. An annual survey by consulting firm Towers Watson of 500 large U.S. companies that had filed their proxy statements by the end of March found that total CEO pay rose by 12 percent in 2014.
Towers Watson said much of the increase came from higher value for pension benefits but even if those benefits were excluded, total compensation would have still risen by about 8 percent.
The decrease for Jacksonville is likely an aberration caused by the timing of certain bonus and incentive payments that may have come in 2013 and not 2014.
The most unusual decrease, according to information in the proxy statement, may have been the 37 percent drop in Stein Mart Inc. Chief Executive Jay Stein’s 2014 package.
The fashion retailer’s proxy said that Stein should receive an annual base salary of $553,200, but he was only paid $289,300 in salary in 2014 because he “requested that his base salary be reduced by $270,000, an amount equivalent to $1,000 per store. “
The proxy statement did not give any more details but according to Linda Tasseff, director of investor relations, that money was returned to Stein Mart’s store network.
“As an expression of his tangible gratitude for all that our store associates do, Mr. Stein personally gave each store $1,000 from his salary to fund parties and luncheons throughout the year,” she said.
Stein also requested that his annual incentive payment be reduced to zero, the proxy said. Stein Mart executives are paid incentives for reaching several specified financial targets, and Stein received $364,813 in incentive payments in fiscal 2013.
The grandson of Stein Mart’s founder is the largest shareholder of the company, controlling 32.8 percent of the stock, according to the proxy.
In recent years, SEC rules have greatly increased the amount of information about executive pay found in companies’ annual proxy statements, but there could be more information coming.
The SEC last week proposed new rules, which were mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, that would give shareholders a metric for assessing executive pay in relation to the company’s financial performance.
The new rules, if adopted, will require companies to disclose pay and performance for itself and a peer group of companies and to “tag the information in an interactive data format,” the SEC said.
The SEC put the rules out for comment for 60 days before it will vote on whether to finalize them.
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NM - not measurable
* appointed CEO on June 3, 2014
** retired as CEO on Jan. 1, 2015
*** retired as CEO on Dec. 29, 2014
****appointed CEO in June 2014