AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre is getting a $158 million retirement package when the 65-year-old Texan retires this June, reports the Wall Street Journal. He’ll also make more than $1 million per year for three years as a consultant for the company, according to Business Week.
Other perks, include country club fees ($25,000) and automobile benefits ($24,000 a year).
AT&T argues that the pay is deserved because the company has “outperformed its peers in delivering value to stockholders” during Whitacre’s tenure. Whitacre took the top job at the company, then known as SBC Communications, in 1990. It morphed into the new AT&T and is now valued at just under 2.5 times its worth back then. Meanwhile the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has risen more than four fold.
Randall Stephenson, the 47-year old chief operating officer of AT&T, was named on Friday to succeed Edward Whitacre as chairman and chief executive of the largest US telecommunications group.
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