NYT Co. CEO and Chairman Overpaid; At Least Somebody Is Making Money at the Times

Here’s a story you’ve probably read in the New York Times: Chief executives at a major company, let’s say a bank, accumulate personal fortunes through bonuses and other compensation channels while their company wilts and withers under financial strain.

But on Friday that story hit a little too close to home at the Times.

After the market closed, reports Editor and Publisher, the New York Times Co. filed an 8-K form, reporting that NYT Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson had been overcompensated to the tune of 100,000-plus stock options each.

A 1991 NYT Co. executive incentive plan limits the number of stock options any individual can receive in a given year to 400,000. In 2008, Robinson received 650,000, and then another 500,000 in 2009. Likewise, Sulzberger took home 500,000 options this year. According to the filing, Robinson and Sulzberger have agreed that the excessive options are void. But that concession was little more than a legal dotting of I’s and crossing of T’s.

From E & P:

[T]o compensate the two for the lost value, the board of directors’ compensation committee drafted up a new plan granting “replacement” SARs, or stock appreciation rights.

The so-called “strike price” for these SARs is equal to original exercise price of the null and void excess options. The strike price for the 2008 options is $20.23 a share, and for the 2009 options is $3.62.

The filing revealed that both Robinson and Sulzberger are also eligible for ‘long-term performance awards’ (as if ‘bonus’ has become a dirty word), designed to be worth around $2 mil., but actually worth up to $3.5 mil. But the executive incentive plan mandates that no payment can exceed $3 mil. in a year, so according to the SEC filing the terms of the tri-annual bonuses have been adjusted to honor that cap.

Maybe this isn’t exactly Lloyd Blankfein money, but it’s still a lot. Especially when everyone else has taken a 5% pay cut to their five- and six-digit salaries.

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