Jeffrey Immelt's, General Electric CEO, 2011 Pay Falls 24 Percent To $11.4 Million

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, center, speaks with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, left, as President Barack Obama, not shown, greeted workers at the GE plant in Schenectady, N.Y., Friday, Jan. 21, 2011. (AP)

-- General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt's compensation fell 24 percent in 2011 after it spiked in 2010.

GE, which makes products ranging from jet engines to light bulbs, as well as financing projects around the globe, gave Immelt a pay package valued at nearly $11.4 million, according to an analysis of regulatory documents filed Friday. That is down from roughly $15.1 million in 2010, when his pay nearly tripled.

General Electric gave the 56-year old CEO a $3.3 million salary and $4 million bonus in 2011, unchanged from the prior year.

Immelt was granted stock awards valued at nearly $3.6 million. He was given none in 2010. He received no option awards in 2011 after being granted $7.4 million in 2010. The company bowed to shareholder pressure last year and put new performance conditions in place on his 2010 stock options.

The total compensation package calculation includes $123.176 in above-market earnings from interest on his pension fund.

General Electric also gave him use of the company aircraft, car allowance and other perks valued at $447,191, up from $389,809 in the prior year.

The company had a tumultuous year in 2011, given the global economic troubles, but increased total net income 22 percent to $14.15 billion, or $1.23 per share for the 2011 fiscal year, compared with $11.64 billion, or $1.06 per share, in 2010.

General Electric praised Immelt's leadership, saying the company is now a smaller, more focused specialty finance company and that senior management's actions have put the company into a position of financial strength.

In addition to his work at the head of the massive company, Immelt has received attention recently for his work as head of President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, where he is consulting with the president on how to stimulate job growth for the U.S.

The Associated Press formula calculates an executive's total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The value that a company assigned to an executive's stock and option awards for 2010 was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company's stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options.

Shares of Fairfield, Conn.-based GE edged up 1 cent to close at $19.04 on Friday.

Comments

[shlomomo]

11:30 AM on 03/13/2012

You got rid of unions and all the gravy went to the top. Wish you people would quit bitching, you have said over and over you don't need anything but your own brilliant mind this is where we are and you just know it will trickle down someday. Just don't hold your breath.

[fortressfountain]

10:30 AM on 03/12/2012

Pension plans paid into by rank and file employees enjoyed a surpluss for many years. Until the people in the top tiers realized they could use the money to make their balance sheets look profitable.
Since the money has long ago been stolen the only "legacy payments" are executive pensions and other unaccounted for losses.
So the rank and file people will get the blame and have to pay for executive pensions and such.
How is this fair?

[Billy Jack]

10:25 AM on 03/12/2012

Hey Immelt, we've got a stake waiting for your head

[Billy Jack]

10:23 AM on 03/12/2012

Oh poor baby. Hear that sound, its the smallest violin in the world

[jcaunter]

04:48 AM on 03/12/2012

Oh, dang. I had sort of assumed that since this guy was now Obama's "job czar", he had quit his job as CEO of GE. I guess America is even more foul and corrupt than I'd be thinking--and I had been thinking it was pretty foul and corrupt!

[TrutherUSA]

09:48 PM on 03/11/2012

And he is still grossly overpaid. His pay is down 24% from 2010, when his pay nearly tripled. So that means he should only be paid about half to a third of what he is currently making.

[Janis Haertling]

03:56 PM on 03/11/2012

I'd play my tiny violin for him, but I had to sell it for food.

[An Independent Woman]

11:47 PM on 03/11/2012

:)

[mjdloc157]

02:47 PM on 03/11/2012

OH poor Jeffrey, go down the haul to Obamas office and maybe he will give your company GE another 44 billion and give you and upgrade from Job Czar

[builderman55]

12:58 PM on 03/11/2012

There IS a culture of entitlement in America--among the 1% who feel they are entitled to keep getting richer and richer and are entitled to a government devoted to their interests...

[rightorwrongihaveavoice]

02:13 PM on 03/11/2012

Exactly, well said!

[builderman55]

12:54 PM on 03/11/2012

Every time I see one of these obscene salary packages I am reminded of the TV show, Hoarders. These people are absolutely no differ from people who hoard things they cannot use until their homes are virtually Impassable. The tragedy of this is, that if the 1% decided tomorrow that they would kick start the economy by taking some risks with their lucre and invest in something other than fortresses to protect their profound insecurity, the economy would be humming in 6 months. This idea that we need to coddle the very same people who now "earn" 45% of the nation's annual income AND own 49% of the nation's entire wealth is nothing more than blackmail. As Buffett said, we don't need a government that coddles millionaires and billionaires. It is of these kinds of situations that revolutions have been spawned in History...

[laura r]

11:57 AM on 03/11/2012

David Stockman (Ronald Reagan's chief Economist) calls Jeffrey Immelt the poster boy for crony capitalism. Before the TARP, he called Sec Hank Paulson, and asked for a bail out because he made some bad business bets. He was give 60 billion within three days; this approval did not go to congress. The 60 billion was not part of TARP, it was a sweet deal given to Jeff because he had the hot line number to Sec. Hank Paulson's private connection.

In the Reagan years there was the Welfare queens, now we have the entitled corporate elite class addicted to Government ---bailouts, subsides, tax loopholes and no regulations (crony capitalism).

David Stockman's book,"The Triumph of Crony Capitalism"

" "I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money...and out of your profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money."
— Senator Boies Penrose (R-Pa.), 1896, citing the relationship between his politics and big business. (the gilded age)

[pinetrale]

01:47 PM on 03/11/2012

Have to grudgingly respect Stockman for calling them the way he see's it rather than blindly parroting republican party talking points. He is more a man than most.

[laura r]

02:02 PM on 03/11/2012

David Stockman is no longer a Repub, he is totally disgusted with the GOP policies.

He also thinks that the entitled corporate elite (crony capitalist) are more damaging to our democracy than any welfare queen ever could have been.

"Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel." — Boies Penrose

[walkerhds]

09:52 AM on 03/11/2012

wow. I saw this guy standing by the off-ramp of the freeway the other day, holding a sign, "will work for food. Please help. God Bless". I just thought he was a bum, but wow.. It was the CEO of GE!!! Times are tough all over...

[pinetrale]

01:50 PM on 03/11/2012

lately I have been noticing a lot of intelligence in the eyes of more and more homeless older men on the off-ramps. I could swear one the other day looked like executive material and well educated. Shouldn't our society do more for these people? We seem having no problem supporting highly expensive foriegn wars half way across the the world. How about some Korean War era tent camps and a stew pot and job coaches and sermons and medical and psych care for these folks. Develop work crews to do certain contract jobs. Why not?

[walkerhds]

02:02 PM on 03/11/2012

if they are displaced C-level execs, an honest day's hard labor actually building something would probably kill them

[jabailo]

09:18 AM on 03/11/2012

Guess his efforts to brainwash Obama into making us all drive battery cars didn't work.

Go hydrogen!

[StormWarrior]

09:00 AM on 03/11/2012

I imagine after all the work they put in to increase the wealth of the wealthiest 1%, right-wingers nationwide, busy eking out a living themselves, will be unhinged in despair and devastation for this poor, poor, millionaire and the reversal of fortune that clearly is his economic plight

[John Shuck]

08:41 AM on 03/11/2012

By Way of Explanation
"Oh reason not the need: our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous; allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life's as cheap as beasts." King Lear
My billion dollar golden parachute,
Surely should provide a comfy landing'
For a bloated demi-god of my repute--
I'm a boss that passes understanding.
I've a corner office high above the fray,
Sheltered from your daily cares and stress--
An ostentatious palace of display,
How can a man like me survive with less?
What is a billion dollars nowadays?
Son Jimmy's putting zillions up his nose,
My daughter Nellie's in a drunken haze,
And trophy wife Nirvana needs new clothes.
Since my efforts can't supply my larder,
You, fair staff, will all be working harder.