Home Delivery

The $2-million club

BY RICHARD J. DALTON JR. | Newsday Staff Writer

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

Executives receiving multimillion-dollar pay packages have more company this year.

At least 54 executives among Long Island's largest 100 public companies had compensation packages surpassing $2 million last year, up 15 percent from 47 executives in that category last year. No Queens executives passed that threshold. Other key findings of Newsday's annual executive compensation analysis:

Though most top executives fell far short of multimillion-dollar pay packages, half received at least $417,000.

The number of executives receiving stock options increased sharply, in contrast to a national downturn in the use of options as companies moved to other rewards more closely linked to performance.

Executives at three companies -- Cablevision Systems Corp., CA Inc. and North Fork Bancorp -- dominated the top 10 list for total pay.

Not all executives had a rosy year, but overall, compensation increased in line with hikes in total pay received by chief executives nationally.

On the top 10 list for total pay, compensation ranged from $6 million for Russell Artzt, executive vice president at CA, to $22.6 million for Charles Dolan, chairman of Cablevision.

Only No. 9, Michael Atieh, executive vice president and chief financial officer at OSI Pharmaceuticals, wasn't employed by one of the big three companies that grabbed the top spots.

Dolan also topped the list for the biggest one-year jump in total pay -- 989 percent -- which includes salary, bonus and options granted last year.

In fact, this is the third year in a row that four Cablevision executives have made the top 10 list. Dolan's pay wasn't disclosed last year because his $2-million pay package was topped by at least five others at the company.

Each year, public companies generally disclose five executives' pay packages -- the chief executive and four most highly paid officers who earned more than $100,000 in salary and bonus. Last year, 440 executives at Long Island's largest 100 companies met that requirement, set by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Queens, five public companies disclosed salaries of 26 executives combined, according to the Newsday survey based on data from Salary.com, which provides compensation data, applications and services.

In addition to revealing compensation of the top five executives, Cablevision also lists salaries and bonuses of six relatives who earned six-figure salaries at the company. Cablevision, which is unique on Long Island as a large public, family-run company with eight relatives in key positions, must reveal the relatives' salaries as part of Securities and Exchange Commission requirements.

Company spokesman Charles Schueler said family members have been senior executives since the Dolans founded the company nearly 35 years ago. "Our executive compensation is fully appropriate and reflects Cablevision's excellent operating performance in 2005, while encouraging strong results in the future," he said.

The multimillion-dollar compensation packages aren't limited to Long Island's multibillion-dollar companies, or even the profitable ones.

Cameron Reid, chief executive of pharmaceuticals company Interpharm Holdings in Hauppauge, took in $2 million in compensation, about 5 percent of the company's $39 million in revenues last fiscal year, when the company had a net loss of $149,000.

Combined, the 440 executives earned $477 million, an average of nearly $1.1 million each. That's up from $431 million in total pay for 451 executives the previous year, an average of $960,000 apiece.

The majority of that compensation -- 56 percent -- went to the fifth of the executives earning more than $2 million. But the multimillion-dollar payouts certainly don't reflect the typical executive pay package locally. Half of the executives took in less than $417,000.

A third of the pay overall came from options. Options offer the chance to buy shares at a fixed price after a specified date, and holders can make a profit if the fixed price is lower than the market price when they cash in the options.

Though the value of options granted last year held steady from the previous year, executives still have many options from prior years, and they've become quite valuable.

A.F. Petrocelli, chairman, president and chief executive at United Capital, a real estate and manufacturing company in Great Neck, stands to gain $52.5 million on options he holds, topping the list.