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NEW FAIRFIELD — General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt's 2010 compensation more than doubled to $15.2 million as the company benefited from a recovering economy.
Immelt's $3.3 million salary was unchanged from the previous year, according to an Associated Press analysis of a company filing on Monday. But he got a $4 million bonus in February for his work in 2010, after getting no bonus for two years in a row. And the company gave him stock options valued at $7.4 million.
His 2009 compensation package amounted to about $5.6 million.
The options for 2 million shares, granted in March 2010, were given "to increase the equity-based portion of Mr. Immelt's compensation and to underscore the board's confidence in his leadership," the company wrote. Immelt, 55, gets half of the options after three years and the other half after five years as long as he stays with the company.
GE's directors decided that Immelt "performed very well in 2010" and beat their goals for him in four financial measures, including earnings from continuing operations, cash generated, and profit margins, according to the filing.
Immelt also received $389,809 in other compensation, almost all of it for his personal use of the company plane. GE said that on Nov. 22, the company and Immelt made a deal where he will lease aircraft from GE for his personal use and pay the actual expenses for each specific flight.
GE also said that in February it canceled performance share units given to Immelt in 2006 because the company did not meet the goals attached to them. GE said its cash from operations did not grow at an average of more than 10 percent per year from 2006 to 2010, and shareholder returns including dividends did not beat the performance of the Standard & Poors 500 index during those years. The 250,000 performance shares had been valued at $6.3 million under accounting rules when they were granted in September 2006, according to GE's 2007 proxy statement.
The Associated Press formula is designed to isolate the value the company's board placed on the executive's total compensation package during the last fiscal year. It includes salary, bonus, performance-related bonuses, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year.
The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which reflect the size of the accounting charge taken for the executive's compensation in the previous fiscal year.
GE, which makes products from dishwashers to wind turbines, and finances large projects around the globe, said in January that net income in the final three months of the year rose 52 percent to $4.46 billion from the same period a year earlier.
GE plans to hold its annual meeting on April 27 in Salt Lake City.
During 2010, GE shares rose almost 21 percent to finish the year at $18.29. On Monday, they fell 44 cents, or 2.2 percent, to close at $19.92.
