Northwest companies cut CEO pay

Northwest executive pay has decreased in the past year in a reflection of the economic downturn.

Median pay for the chief executives of publicly traded companies in Washington, Oregon and Idaho dropped 6 percent this past year to $1.18 million, an analysis by The Seattle Times found.

The decrease in Northwest CEO pay came after several straight years of steep increases.

The top-paid CEO in the region still made more than $13 million last year, but the person on top in 2007 made nearly three times as much. And some Northwest CEOs who qualified for bonuses last year declined them anyway, because of the recession.

"CEOs are sensitive to the present moment, partly because of how dramatically catastrophic performance has been," said Doug Kilgore, executive director of the Worker Owner Council of Washington State, who monitors publicly traded companies in the Northwest for building-trade unions with large pension funds.

Lower pay for Northwest CEOs was part of a national trend: Median compensation for CEOs of the 500 largest U.S. companies fell 7.5 percent last year to $8 million, according to Equilar, an executive-compensation research firm in the San Francisco Bay Area, which analyzed pay for The Seattle Times.

Pay is the sum of salary, bonuses, stock and options awards given during the year, and "other," which can include the cost of a health-club membership, car allowance, security detail or private use of a corporate jet.

Median bonuses fell 41 percent last year as profits decreased by a median 23 percent among Northwest companies whose CEOs were in place for both 2007 and 2008.

Kilgore said CEOs who made do without bonuses showed "good behavior," and used Seattle-based Nordstrom as an example of how bonuses should be handled.

Three of its top five executives - Blake, Pete and Erik Nordstrom - were entitled to no 2008 bonuses because they fell short of their goals for two key financial metrics.

"We didn't earn bonuses based on our results, so we didn't deserve them," said Nordstrom spokeswoman Brooke White. "We are proud of our team when we get the results that serve our customers and shareholders well, and bonuses are earned because of those results."

Paccar CEO Mark Pigott topped this year's regional list with total compensation of $13.8 million, a 46 percent pay raise from 2007.

His pay went up because he bought stock in early 2008 and received a $6.4 million match from the company. Yet that match won't vest until 2013, and only then if Paccar stacks up well against its rivals.

Paccar's compensation committee noted in a regulatory filing that Pigott declined a $1.1 million bonus "in recognition of the challenging economic recession and the negative effect upon the company's employees and stockholders."

In second place was Clearwire's Benjamin Wolff, at $11.1 million, and Schnitzer Steel's John Carter at $10.9 million. Starbucks' Howard Schultz, who took over the CEO post last year, was No. 4 with a pay package valued at $9.7 million.

About 375 publicly held companies in the United States have reduced salaries for top executives in the past year, according to Equilar. They run the gamut from a 10 percent reduction for the CEO of American Express to a salary of just $1 for the head of General Motors.