Walmart CEO Doug McMillon was paid nearly 1,200 times the salary of the median Walmart worker in 2017, according to the company’s annual proxy statement.
McMillon’s total compensation rose 2% last year to $22.8 million, most of it — $15.7 million — coming from stock awards. He also drew a salary of $1.3 million and received incentive pay of $4.7 million.
The median Walmart worker’s salary was $19,177 — 0.015% of the CEO’s salary. The ratio to McMillon’s total compensation was 1,888 to 1.
Under a 2015 rule mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, companies are now required to report their CEO pay in comparison to the median worker. To calculate its ratio, Walmart excluded about 90,000 employees outside of the U.S. — or about 3.9% of the total workforce — with the remaining 2.2 million workers determining the median compensation.
The proxy also showed that Walmart CFO M. Brett Biggs had total compensation of $7.6 million in 2017, up 18.5% from the previous year. He was paid a base salary of $871,087, stock awards of $4.2 million and a bonus of $2 million.
Other top earners were Walmart U.S. CEO Gregory Foran (down to $11 million from $11.5 million); John R. Furner, president and CEO of the Sam’s Club division, who had a compensation package worth $12.8 million; and Marc Lore, chief executive of Walmart eCommerce U.S., who made $10.2 million.
The idea behind the pay ratio rule was to provide more insight into income inequality. But according to Dan Marcec, director of content at executive pay data firm Equilar, the disclosures so far have been “relatively unhelpful” because companies are able to choose how they evaluate pay.
“Bottom line, it’s not telling us anymore about income inequality that we didn’t already know,” he told MarketWatch.
Other companies with relatively high CEO pay ratios include Weight Watchers International at 5,908 to 1, Mattel at 4,987 to 1, Gap at 2,900 to 1, and Yum Brands at 1,358 to 1.