Dave Hawn moves on from EMC Group; Patterson CEO's payday

Nearly 600 employees of education-and-finance company ECMC Group of Oakdale will relocate next month to refurbished Washington Square, the three-building complex in the Gateway District of downtown that's being reinvented as a next-generation technology-and-business hub.

However, ECMC Group CEO Dave Hawn won't make the trip.

Hawn, 52, a former Wells Fargo banker who joined ECMC eight years ago, on Sept. 1 will become CEO of Urban Ventures, the 70-employee south side nonprofit that works with business, schools and community groups to fight poverty and build economy in the core city.

Urban Ventures partnered several years ago with Ryan Companies to build the $28 million Colin Powell Leadership Center and Christo Rey Jesuit school in the striking complex on Fourth Avenue S., a block north of E. Lake Street, and helped revitalize a neighborhood also buoyed by Wells Fargo Mortgage campus that replaced Honeywell 15 years ago.

Hawn replaces Tim Clark, who left Urban Ventures for another nonprofit. Hawn said Urban Ventures has doubled its revenue to more than $5 million in recent years and serves about 15,000 youth and adults annually with a variety of training, family counseling, after-school education and other programs.

Hawn said he was called by his faith to leave the corporate world after 30 years to lead the inner-city enterprise.

Since joining ECMC, Hawn helped grow the company to 3,500 employees — overseeing $30 billion in assets, $700 million in annual revenue and a $600 million charitable foundation. Hawn said a key recent development was working with the U.S. Department of Education and the Consumer Protection Bureau to take over part of failed private-college operator Corinthian College. It was doomed by poor performance and high student-default rates, most of it on government loans for its trade schools. ECMC helped refinance or forgive $480 million in high-cost debt for aggrieved students.

CEO Scott Anderson of Patterson Companies earned about $4.1 million in cash-stock compensation last fiscal year, the company recently disclosed. He also has a unique feature in his go-forward compensation package.

It is a grant of 250,000 "premium priced" stock options meant to reward Anderson for the $1.1 billion acquisition in June 2015 of Animal Health International. That deal increased the size of Patterson and focused it on two primary markets: veterinary and animal health, and its traditional dental-products market. After the acquisition and the sale of its medical rehabilitation business in 2015, Patterson produced $5.4 billion in annual revenue, up 38 percent from fiscal 2015.

The exercise prices of most stock options are set at the market close on the date of grant. Patterson' s one time grant were priced at 15 percent premium to the closing price on the date of grant.

With premium price options, shareholders are guaranteed a minimum return before option holders realize gains. And while option holders will have to be a little more patient, a larger-than-usual grant means the outsized gains. Another wrinkle: Most options vest in full on the third-year anniversary of the grant. These will vest 25 percent on the third anniversary, 25 percent on the fourth and 50 percent on the fifth.

At the date of grant, Patterson's share price was $49.27. The one-time grant of options was priced at $56.66 and had a grant date value of $2.38 million. As part of Anderson's annual long-term equity compensation he received 42,698 options with an exercise price of $49.27. With Patterson's stock price around $46 last week, the options were underwater at either price. Still ample time for the options to get valuable.

Make that one century's worth of dividends to shareholders.

"A hallmark of our company's long history of success is the ability to consistently invest to grow our businesses and to create value for our shareholders, including paying a strong and steady dividend," CEO Inge Thulin said. "We are proud to mark 3M's 100th consecutive year of paying dividends, which we have increased for each of the last 58 years."

3M, which traded for under $50 per share during the depths of the 2008-09 Great Recession, has traded around $180 per share recently.

The company, with more than 89,400 employees worldwide and 17,000 in Minnesota, makes products from sandpaper to Scotch tape, to hospital dressings and worker harnesses.