Bank of America Chief Executive Brian T. Moynihan not only survived a campaign by some shareholders to oust him in 2015, but also went on to be awarded a 23 percent pay rise when compared with the previous year. The New York Times has revealed that the Charlotte, N.C. based bank paid Mr Moynihan $16 million for his work last year – his highest since taking over as CEO.
Moynihan’s pay package is comprised of a $1.5 million cash salary plus $14.5 million in performance based restricted stock awards. UPI reports that Moynihan will receive the full value of this package only if BoA achieves an average return of eighty percent on its assets during the coming three years.
While the deal is considerably better for Mr Moynihan than the $13 million he received in 2014, it is still significantly less than that offered to the heads of BoA’s main competitors. Indeed, the New York Times asserted that this is at the lower end of Wall Street executive pay, with Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd C. Blankfein earning $23 million last year, despite a pay cut, while JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon was the recipient of a $27 million pay package for the same period.
The BoA board’s decision to raise Moynihan’s package no doubt reflects the bank’s improved fortunes over the last year, with its capital levels seeing a healthy increase and profits generated in the region of $16 billion. A major improvement over the comparatively paltry sum of £4.8 billion the bank was able to net in 2014 – when it was forced to pay out several billion dollars in order to settle investigations into the sale of faulty mortgage securities. In a statement outlining the details of Mr Moynihan’s increased pay package, the bank said that:
Bank of America in 2015 demonstrated continued progress as a result of its strategy of simplifying the company.
Nonetheless, as with many other businesses, 2016 has already seen the value of BoA’s shares drop steeply, losing 29 percent since the beginning of the year.
