Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally earned $13.57 million in total compensation in 2008, a 37 percent decline from his $21.67 million pay package a year earlier.
Mulally’s cash compensation dropped 78 percent in 2008. He received $2 million in salary, unchanged from 2007. He received no bonus, down from a $4 million bonus in 2007. Ford reported Mulally’s compensation Tuesday, March 24, in a preliminary proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In the proxy, Ford detailed compensation cuts it is making to reduce costs and conserve cash “in response to the difficult global economic climate.”
They include:
• A 30 percent reduction in Mulally’s salary for 2009 and 2010.
• Elimination of 2009 merit increases for salaried employees in the United States and most other global markets.
• Elimination of annual incentive compensation program bonuses for 2008 and 2009 for global salaried employees.
• No cash compensation for members of Ford’s board of directors in 2009.
“Ford is acutely aware that current economic conditions have had a significant adverse impact on our shareholders, customers, dealers, employees and other stakeholders,” the company wrote in the preliminary proxy.
“We do not view these actions as merely symbolic, but as a necessary step in the restructuring of our business in which all our stakeholders have been asked to participate.”
In addition to Mulally’s earnings, Ford also detailed the earnings of four other top executives:
• CFO Lewis Booth earned total compensation of $4.74 million, down 54 percent. Booth’s salary rose from $868,133 in 2007 to $1.08 million in 2008.
• Mark Fields, president of the Americas, earned total compensation of $4.83 million, down 42 percent. His salary rose from $1.26 million in 2007 to $1.3 million in 2008.
• Jim Farley, Ford group vice president of marketing and communications, earned total compensation of $2.65 million. His salary was $700,000. Ford paid Farley, who joined the company from Toyota in late 2007, a bonus of $660,000. That was part of the 2007 package to attract him from Toyota and offset the forfeiture of certain compensation there.
• General counsel David Leitch earned total compensation of $2.62 million. That included $850,000 in salary and a $150,000 bonus related to a retention award granted in 2006.
Filed by Amy Wilson of Automotive News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce com
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