Amex chief Chenault earns rewards worth $370m over 17-year tenure
Credit card company’s returns fare worse than S&P 500 over period
Kenneth Chenault will walk away from American Express having pocketed more than $370m during his 17-year tenure, a period in which the shares have returned more than the financial sector but less than the wider stock market.
Data provided to the Financial Times by the pay consultants Equilar lay bare the wealth that Mr Chenault has accumulated from running the US credit card group.
Mr Chenault, 66, this month called time on the longest spell by a chief executive at a Dow Jones Industrial Average company, saying he planned to retire early next year.
His time at the top has also been among the most lucrative in corporate America, and some governance experts have frowned upon the company’s remuneration practices. Since he took the helm, Mr Chenault has realised stock options totalling $150m as well as at least $104m in share awards.
He has also netted $24m in salary, $76m in annual bonuses and $16m in other forms of remuneration. Perks include a company aircraft, although in 2010 the board capped his annual usage at a value of $200,000.
Last year, Mr Chenault was handed a $17m pay deal, tied in part to the company’s future performance. That was down about a fifth from the prior year, and was among his more modest annual hauls. Despite the cut, he was still the 99th highest paid chief executive of a listed US company that year, according to Equilar.
American Express declined to comment on Mr Chenault’s pay during his tenure.
Mr Chenault became chief executive in January 2001 and chairman three months later. He led the company’s recovery from the September 11 terrorist attacks, in which 11 of its employees were killed.
The son of a dentist and Harvard Law School graduate went on to steer American Express through the 2008 crisis and kept his job in its aftermath. More recently he has sought to keep Amex cards in customer wallets at a time of intensifying competition.
Executive pay has been in the spotlight at Amex, whose biggest shareholder is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. In a “say on pay” ballot this year, 27 per cent of shareholder votes were cast against the company.
The proxy voting group ISS raised a series of concerns. Conditions attached to bonuses were not “particularly rigorous”, it said.
Investors who bought shares when Mr Chenault became chief executive have made a return, including reinvested dividends, of 166 per cent. Investors would have done better had they instead invested in the S&P 500 index of US stocks, which has generated a 181 per cent return during the Chenault era.
The financial sector, whose returns were damaged by the 2008 banking collapse, saw returns of 66 per cent in the same period.
The pay figures exclude the realised value of Mr Chenault’s vested stock awards before 2006, when the company was not required to publish that. They also exclude his tally for 2017, which the company has yet to disclose.