AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre is retiring on June 3rd, and his retirement package is getting a lot of attention. All told he is walking out with about $158.5 million, making him sort of a boomer hero. This is second largest retirement package for a public company CEO. The Wall Street Journal points out that the man who put the Texas in AT&T is getting some interesting retirement perks.
- $24,000 in annual automobile benefits
- $6,500 each year for “home security”
- Access to AT&T’s corporate jet for 10 hours a month
- $25,000 to cover his country-club fees
- A little over $1 million for three years for work as a consultant.
It is worthy of pointing out that at the end of first quarter, AT&T had 65.43 million access lines, thanks to the $85bn acquisition of Bell South. That move basically helped make up for all the access lines lost since the first quarter of 2001. SBC in that quarter had 61.25 million access lines.
7 comments so far
7:33 AM PT
Super-high “payouts” like this for creative, innovative, risk-taking individuals with ownership positions; especially as a result of liquidation events; is generally warranted and well deserved…or if a private company, so be it.
As a public company, however, this kind of money–short of truly impressive company turnarounds and/or unquestioned “monster” value creation (like Steve Jobs has engineered)–is obscene.
9:09 AM PT
Yeah Steve Morsa you’re right but I’m having a hard time believing that this info is worthy of a blog post by Om since its not really useful news (nothing anyone can do about Ed’s golden parachute). Its really not all that interesting actually. I’d rather learn something new about the cutting edge of high tech not the old farts in old tech.
9:22 AM PT
Well i am not sure if I agree with you Darryl - this is the largest phone company in the country, and that this is the second largest retirement package, it is relevant news.
If you read the last paragraph, you kind of see why this is even more incredible. All those mergers later, they are ahead of there total access lines by a mere 4 million lines. (Post BellSouth… mind you.)
On the old farts part… I am as guilty… anyway regular programming on monday!
12:07 PM PT
10hrs in a jet per month has the same carbon footprint as 120 american cars.
There are lots of reasonable reasons to need private aviation services when you are a public company executive (security, time, team perks, etc). I’m struggling with why you need it in retirement.
7:14 PM PT
It’s a “requirement” because there ain’t no way someone who is so used to such life perks is going to enjoy flying through commercial. I don’t see anything that’s wrong with it.
9:10 PM PT
Wonder if Ed ever had a Bernie moment?
5:30 PM PT
Ol Ed’s a good ol’ boy. Don’t you criticize him. Now why y’all want to tarnish the fine reputation of an American patriot? He should’ve gotten more than $158M when you consider the fine job he did in buying all them companies. Bless his patriotic heart and let’s hope he gets more than $1M consulting. Hell, that ain’t nothin’ ’cause it’ll only by you 3 McMansions in San Antonio.
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