PAYDAY: GM's Rick Wagoner Drives Away with $20M Retirement.................thanks Susan
Rick Wagoner will leave his post as CEO of bailed-out General Motors with a $20 million retirement package, the company's financial filings show.
Although the Treasury Department has barred GM from paying severance to Wagoner or any other senior executive, Wagoner is eligible to collect millions in retirement benefits from his former employer, according to the documents reviewed by ABC News.
The Obama administration asked for Wagoner to resign Sunday, as part of its restructuring of the auto industry. President Obama said this morning that forcing Wagoner out indicated it was a time for new leadership.
Under Wagoner's leadership, GM lost tens of billions of dollars, took billions in taxpayer-financed aid, and cut tens of thousands of jobs, including announced plans to cut 47,000 employees by the end of 2009.
Wagoner's Private Jet Trip to Washington
Wagoner was one of the three auto industry CEOs who inflamed Congressional ire by flying to Washington in private jets to ask for taxpayers to bail out their beleaguered businesses. They returned a month later in hybrid cars.
Upon his departure, Wagoner becomes eligible for both a "Salaried Retirement Plan" and an "Executive Retirement Plan" with General Motors. The combined value of the plans at the end of last year was $20.2 million, according to the company's filings with the SEC, although compensation experts said his age -- 56 -- may make him ineligible for the entire amount.
"Most of that will be paid out as an annuity over five years, the remainder is a small lifetime annuity," GM spokeswoman Julie M. Gibson said in an email earlier today. But in a subsequent "clarification" email after this story published, Gibson said that the terms of Wagoner's final compensation were not yet hammered out. "Specifics on any compensation entitled to, or actually paid to Mr. Wagoner are still being reviewed," she wrote.
"I think it's another perfect example of why there's so much frustration among working people," said Tiffany Ten Eyck of Labor Notes, a Detroit-based independent publication covering unions. "I wouldn't mind retiring out of an industry in crisis with a $20 million package."
GM has received billions in loans from the U.S. Treasury Department, and recently asked for billions more. Under its agreement with Treasury, it cannot pay severance fees to senior executives. That ban does not appear to apply to retirement benefits, however.