General Electric Co. Chief Executive John Flannery and other top company executives received no bonuses in 2017, but the $9 million Flannery was awarded in his first year as CEO still managed to be 157 times higher than the salary of the company’s median employee. GE GE, -1.68% said in a filing late Monday that Flannery’s salary was set at $2 million, plus stock options, pension and deferred compensation and other monies that took his total pay package to $9 million for the year. “The compensation committee did not award Mr. Flannery a bonus (with his concurrence), despite the 24% funding for the company bonus pool,” GE said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Committee. Flannery was not singled out — only one GE executive, David Joyce, the chief executive for GE Aviation, received a $1.4 million bonus in 2017. “For 2017, the Compensation Committee determined that, for the first time in GE’s history, the senior leaders at GE’s headquarters — our past and present CEOs, CFOs, Vice Chairs, General Counsel and HR directors — would not receive bonuses,” the company said in its annual proxy filing. “We also zeroed out the performance share units awarded to senior leaders in 2015 even though the recipients were technically eligible for a partial payout.” Flannery has been CEO since August and board chairman since October. As part of the transition, the board had set a significantly lower base salary for Flannery compared with outgoing CEO Jeff Immelt, among other changes, GE said in the filing. GE said its median employee — identified as a worker employed in Germany in its healthcare business — earned $57,211 in total compensation for 2017, bringing GE’s CEO-to-regular-employee ratio to 157 to one. The CEO-pay ratio disclosure is part of a rule adopted in 2015 that requires public companies to disclose the ratio of compensation of its chief executive to the median compensation of its employees. Companies were required to comply for their first fiscal year on or after January 2017, which means that more ratios will be disclosed as companies file their proxies. Last month, Honeywell International Inc. disclosed a CEO-pay ratio of 333 to one. Chief Executive Darius Adamczyk earned nearly $17 million in compensation in 2017, while the annual total compensation of the employee identified as at the median of the company was $50,296. Also Monday afternoon, AT&T Inc. T, -1.75% disclosed that Chief Executive Randall Stephenson’s compensation was 366 times that of the median worker. General Electric shares have lost 49% in the past 12 months. That contrasts with 17% gains for the S&P 500 index SPX, -1.01% and 21% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. DJIA, -1.38%. The stock was hit particularly hard last month as it disclosed in its annual report that it expects to restate its 2016 and 2017 earnings lower as a result of new accounting standards. GE in January disclosed a SEC investigation into some of its accounting practices, especially those related to insurance reserves.
US conglomerate General Electric (GE) did not award bonuses in 2017 to CEO John Flannery, along with other executives. Just one company executive, David Joyce, the CEO for GE Aviation, received a bonus, valued at $9m, for the year. This was the first time in the firm’s history that such bonuses were not granted. Despite this, the $1.4m Flannery was paid for his first year in post was still 157 times higher than that of GE’s median employee. GE shares have fallen 49% over the past year.