The Washington Business Journal has ranked USEC CEO John Welch one of the most overpaid executives in the D.C. region, though the company said in a response that “executive compensation numbers are not always what they seem.” The Journal ranked Welch one of the two most overpaid executives in the area, citing a total compensation in 2011 of about $6.5 million, the same year the company’s revenue dropped 17.9 percent, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
But according to the company, Welch’s earnings in 2011 totaled only about $1.8 million when pension accruals and stock awards were properly accounted for. “More than half of the compensation reported for our CEO represented additional non-cash pension accruals, which if removed would show more than a $1 million decline in compensation for our CEO in 2011,” USEC spokesman Paul Jacobson said in a statement. “This pension was part of his original terms of employment and the change in value was due primarily to accrual methodology and changes in discount rate assumptions. Base salary is capped at 22% of the CEO’s pay opportunity, with the remainder of his total direct pay opportunity being variable or ‘at risk.’ Our CEO received only a fraction of the value of stock awards that were included in the reported numbers for 2011 and has not sold a single share of USEC stock in the market since he joined the company in 2005.”