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IBM pays CEO $15.4M in her 1st year on the job

Monday - 3/11/2013, 8:19pm  ET

ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) -- IBM Chairman and CEO Virginia Rometty's pay doubled in her first year running one of the world's biggest and best-known technology companies, but she still took home less than her predecessor.

Rometty, the first woman to run IBM, received a 2012 pay package worth $15.4 million, based on an analysis of regulatory documents filed Monday. That's up sharply from the roughly $7.5 million she made the year before as senior vice president in charge of the company's global sales and marketing. As with most CEOs, most of Rometty's compensation consisted of long-term stock awards that could wind up being worth more or less than the $9.3 million listed in the initial disclosures.

Rometty, 55, got off to a solid start, focusing on growing IBM's software business, which has higher profit margins, over hardware. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company's adjusted earnings climbed 13 percent from the previous year under Sam Palmisano and it forecast 2013 results above analyst expectations. Its stock price edged up just 4 percent last year, though, lagging the 7 percent gain in the Dow Jones industrial average, which consists of 30 bellwether stocks, including IBM's.

Palmisano, who had been IBM's CEO for a decade, remained chairman until October and then served as a senior adviser to the company, receiving a total 2012 package valued at $22.3 million, by AP's calculations. That's slightly less than the $24.2 million he received in his final year as CEO, but more than the roughly $21 million that he made annually from 2007 through 2010.

Rometty's first-year package included a $1.5 million salary, a $3.9 million bonus and perks valued at $687,725, including more than $304,000 for personal travel on the company's airplanes. The AP's formula counts salary, bonuses, perks and stock and options awarded to the executive during the year. It doesn't include changes in retention and pension plans, two factors that IBM Corp. listed in its summary of Rometty's calculation.
