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Delta execs seek to preempt pay critics
The chief executive and president try to put their seven-figure compensation in context.
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ATLANTA - Delta Air Lines' top two executives sought to prepare employees and investors Wednesday for what they will see when the world's largest airline files its proxy: large total compensation for the leaders in 2008, a year in which the company posted a net loss of $8.9 billion.
Chief Executive Richard Anderson and President Ed Bastian took the unusual step of providing their W-2 earnings for last year in a memo to employees that also was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Those figures are $2.5 million for Anderson and $5.2 million for Bastian.
They said the figures represent the actual value of their 2008 compensation as reported to the government, even though the total compensation that will show up in their proxy today may show larger numbers.
Bastian has served as chief executive of Eagan-based Northwest Airlines since its acquisition by Delta last fall. Northwest is being run as a Delta subsidiary until the two airlines merge their operations.
The memo comes at a time when Americans are increasingly scrutinizing high executive pay amid massive job losses among rank-and-file employees in numerous industries because of the deep economic downturn.
The two Delta executives said their "ongoing" compensation is in the bottom third of U.S. corporations of similar size as Delta.
"However, it is still a considerable amount and we do not take it for granted," Anderson and Bastian said.
The executives acknowledged that stock and option awards they were granted last year may cause total compensation figures in the proxy to be higher, but they stressed that much of that compensation is not available to them and has little to no current value because of Delta's current stock price.
They also noted that the numbers that will show up in the proxy were influenced by Atlanta-based Delta's emergence from bankruptcy in 2007 and its acquisition of Northwest in 2008.
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