Axon Enterprises CEO could receive a $246M payday
Axon Enterprises awarded its CEO one of the biggest compensation packages for a corporate executive worth $246 million.
Rick Smith, head of the stun-gun and body camera company, told FOX Business the performance package is slightly misleading because it is tied to stock options paid over a decade.
“It is a 10 year performance package where I have the opportunity to earn one percent for every billion dollars of market cap that we add,” he said on Wednesday.
According to Axon’s annual proxy report, Smith’s options can only be vested if the Scottsdale, Arizona based company hits several performance targets.
“That’s only if we take the market cap from when it was $1.3 billion when we started, we have to 10x it to $13 billion,” Smith said on “Varney & Company.”
Corporate CEOs have been criticised over pay increases that have seen company executives’ salaries skyrocket over the past decade. Disney CEO Bob Iger’s $65 million fiscal 2018 salary was recently criticized by Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of co-founder Roy Disney.
In a FOX Business capitalism vs. socialism town hall event town last week, Lou Dobbs agreed with the Disney heiress saying, “The CEO pay is out of line. It is absolutely an anomaly within American history.”
The perils of income inequality have stirred up a debate as corporations focus more on profits while failing to pay employees a decent wage.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP
Smith said he is incorporating a similar compensation plan into the company structure that will make over 100 of its employees millionaires if Axon’s financial goals are met.
“The rest will get a minimum of about $17,000 all the way up into the 100s and hundreds of thousands,” he said. “So it feels good to make this pretty inclusive so it’s just not me.”
The company sells Tasers to police departments around the world.