CEO Pay Watch Deluxe Corp.

Lee Schram, CEO

Total compensation: $10,082,963 for the year ended Dec. 31, 2014

Salary: $871,000

Non-equity incentive pay: $2,064,532

Other compensation: $69,927

Exercised stock options: $7,077,504

New stock options: 64,435

Total 2014 shareholder return: 21.8 percent

Note: Schram took home more than twice as much in 2014 than the $4.8 million he took home in 2013.

Schram has been CEO of Deluxe since May 2006, and a rising share price during his tenure helped him gain $7.1 million from previously issued stock options he exercised last year.

During Schram's tenure, Deluxe's shares have had an annualized total return of about 16.5 percent, which was better than the S&P Midcap index (8.4 percent) and the larger S&P 500 index (7.5 percent).

Schram's $2.1 million bonus for the year included payments from the company's Annual Incentive Plan and a Cash Performance Plan that is based on a three-year performance period that ended in 2014. Schram earned $1,202,032 from the AIP plan and $862,500 from the CPP plan. No payments were made from the CPP plan in 2012 and 2013.

For 2014, Deluxe also awarded a Schram a supplemental grant of restricted stock worth about $1.5 million, which will vest in three years. According to the proxy, the board's compensation committee "believes that the CEO's long-term incentive compensation for several years had been thoughtfully conservative, lagging the median of chief executive officers of the Peer Group companies." The supplemental award was made to redress that lag and recognize Schram's "outstanding past leadership and his continuing contributions to the company's strategic goals."

Patrick Kennedy