Pay quadrupled for Brian Moynihan, Bank of America CEO

GlobalPost

Bank of America more than quadrupled the compensation of its CEO Brian Moynihan last year, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today.

Moynihan’s $950,000 annual salary stayed the same, but he earned $6.1 million in performance-linked restricted stock units in 2011, compared with zero in 2010, Bloomberg News reported. That brought his total 2011 compensation to $8.1 million, up from $1.9 million the year before. He did not earn any cash bonus in 2011, though other executives on the bank’s management team did.

Bank of America said most of Moynihan’s stock awards will only vest if he meets goals for the bank’s return on assets, and the earliest they could be paid out is March 2015, Bloomberg News reported.

Bank of America’s proxy filing highlighted the CEO’s achievements last year, Fox News reported. The board praised Moynihan for how he cut costs and "encouraged a culture of risk management accountability.” It added: “Under Mr. Moynihan's direction, our company continued to strengthen its balance sheet in key risk areas by improving capital and overall liquidity and reducing debt.”

Bank of America earned $1.4 billion in profit in 2011, up from a $2.2 billion loss a year earlier, but revenue stagnated, Bloomberg News reported. Moynihan has said he plans to eliminate at least 30,000 jobs as he seeks to slash costs.

Moynihan is not the highest-paid executive at Bank of America, Crain’s New York Business noted. His 2011 compensation trailed that of Co-Chief Operating Officer Thomas Montag ($14.3 million), Chief Financial Officer Bruce Thompson ($11.1 million) and the bank’s other co-COO, David Darnell ($8.4 million).

He also has a long way to go to catch up to the compensation of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit ($14.9 million) and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf ($17.9 million), according to Crain’s New York Business.

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