INTERNATIONAL – Walt Disney said on Monday that chief executive Robert Iger had agreed to certain adjustments to his compensation package, which tied his paycheck to the company’s performance, as it nears the completion of its Twenty-First Century Fox acquisition.
Under the new agreement, Iger will earn no shares if the company’s relative total shareholder return is less than or equal to 25 percentile of the total shareholder return of companies in the S&P 500 index.
He will get the full target amount of 937 599 shares only if the company outperforms the bottom 65 percent of firms on the same index, the company said in a regulatory filing here.
The amended deal comes after Disney shareholders challenged Iger’s pay earlier this year. They were worried about overpaying the chief executive, who stood to earn up to $423 million over four years, and that his performance targets were too low.
“In line with the Disney Board’s pay-for-performance philosophy, the amendments to Iger’s contract establish more rigorous performance requirements for his equity award than those reflected in the original contract,” a spokesperson of Walt Disney said.
Under the previous compensation package, Iger was being paid up to $48.5 million in annual salary and bonuses following the Fox deal closure for each of the four years from 2018-2021.
At last spring’s shareholder meeting the company suffered a rare rebuke when a majority opposed its executive pay in a non-binding vote, a very rare result for a US company.