WHO GETS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?
Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin took a 23% pay cut last year, leaving him with a measly $21 million and change in salary, bonuses and stock options. Vice Chairman Ted Turner, meanwhile, broke $17 million, and President Richard Parsons’ total neared $10.5 million.
This fascinating info appeared in Time Warner’s SEC proxy, filed yesterday (3/30). The filing also revealed Time Warner’s plans to cut its pension expense by roughly $60 million this year, as part of the media monolith’s overall cost-reduction efforts. Clearly, these cost reductions don’t extend to the executive suites.
Levin's 1999 total breaks down as follows: $1 million in salary, $9 million in bonuses, an estimated $10.4 million in stock options (in contrast to his ’98 stock-option take of $18 million) and another $590 thousand in miscellaneous compensation.
It’s also worth noting that, like every other Time Warner employee, Levin was able to immediately exercise all of the stock options he held when TW was acquired by America Online on January 9. And you better believe that’s a whole lotta stock options—enough, at least, that Levin won’t have to worry about his TW pension plan.
