The proxy season kicks off with an announcement that former Hewlett-Packard Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman took home more than $17.7 million in 2006. About $8.6 million of the total was the result of Wayman exercising stock options.
Wayman, who officially retired on December 31, also received more than $4 million in long-term incentive plan (LTIP) payouts. HP said in its proxy that this amount was based upon the company’s performance over the three-year period from May 2003 through April 2006 compared to targets for specific measures that were set and approved by the company’s human resources department and board compensation committee. Wayman’s $975,000 salary remained the same as the previous two years.
The former CFO spent 37 years with the HP. He joined the company in 1969 as a cost accountant and held a variety of finance positions before being named CFO in 1984. Wayman served as interim chief executive officer for a few months after Carly Fiorina was fired in February 2005.
In September, former HP chairman Patricia Dunn said Wayman approved an investigation into boardroom leaks that has since led to the resignation of Dunn and several other directors and executives in the company’s spying scandal. In planned testimony released ahead of House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearings last year, Dunn said that she relied on Wayman’s expertise in dealing with board security issues. Specifically, Dunn noted that in early 2005, Wayman, who had been CFO and acting chief executive of HP at the time, referred her to Kevin Huska, the head of global security for HP. “[Wayman] himself, as a director and top executive, was as concerned as anyone about the problem of leaks,” Dunn stated.
Government investigators have not made mentioned of Wayman in public statements related to the board spying probe. However, Wayman is named as a defendant in an investor derivative lawsuit filed in November that charges five HP officials with insider trading.
In other news related to executive pay, several other companies recently disclosed relatively high compensation totals for their CFOs in 2006. For example:
• Douglas Fears, vice president of finance and CFO of Helmerich & Payne Inc., an oil and gas drilling and exploration company, earned nearly $4.9 million last year. A bulk of this sum—slightly more than $4 million—came from exercising stock options.
• Donald Roof, executive vice president, CFO and treasurer of Joy Global, a farm and construction machinery company, took home more than $4.8 million last year. This included more than $3 million from exercising stock options, and $738,170 in LTIP payouts.
• Paul Reyelts, executive vice president and CFO of Valspar, a building materials company, earned a little more than $2 million. This includes a bonus of more than $1.1 million.