Total compensation: $22,348,908 for year ended Dec. 31, 2017
Salary: $1,237,500
Nonequity incentive pay: $1,856,300
Other compensation: $243,608
Exercised stock options: $14,195,646
Value realized on vesting shares: $4,815,854
New stock options: 172,742
Total 2017 shareholder return: 15.8 percent
CEO pay ratio: 238:1
Median employee pay: $60,556
Note: Baker took home 11.7 percent less in 2017 than he did in 2016.
Baker, who joined the St. Paul-based company in 1998 and has been chairman and CEO since 2004, is exercising options nearing the end of their 10-year life. He realized 22.6 percent less from stock option gains in 2017, which pulled down his overall compensation. Most other compensation categories went up.
Baker saw a 4.2 percent increase to his base salary and a 9.3 percent increase to his annual incentive pay. Baker and other Ecolab executives mostly earned larger annual incentive pay than the previous year as performance against pre-established goals hit 98 percent of target for the year.
More than three-quarters of Baker's pay plan is composed of long-term equity awards, half from stock options and half from performance-based restricted stock awards. Baker realized 24 percent more in 2017 from restricted stock awards. The performance-based restricted stock awards are based on the company's return on invested capital over the last three years, and Baker and other officials earned the maximum award.
Patrick Kennedy
Dayton, Minn.-based Forgent formed through private-equity acquisitions, makes electrical components for data centers that fuel AI boom.
