Chief Executive Manager of Hewlett Packard, Meg Whitman, will receive for her first year at the helm of the company, a compensation package of $15.4 million, although the company recorded a loss of $12.7 billion and HP stock declined by 39%. Whitman took over the lead of HP in 2011 to try to revive the business of the world’s largest manufacturer of PCs, a company which failed to enter the mobile gadget market. The sales of HP fell last year by 5%, to $120.4 billion.
Decline in demand for traditional computers combined with the explosive growth of smartphones and tablets raised serious problems for the PC industry, from Microsoft to HP and Dell. PC sales fell by 6.4% worldwide in the last three months of last year, marking the first decline in 11 years during the holiday season, according to estimates by market research firm IDC.
Whitman received last year a symbolic salary of $ 1, but received a performance bonus of $1.7 million, $7 million worth of shares and a package of options (shares that can be purchased later at a predetermined price) of $6.4 million, according to Bloomberg which quotes a report from HP.
Meg Whitman took over as CEO in September 2011, shortly before the end of that fiscal year, receiving a payment of $16.5 million for the period. HP is trying to find a recipe for recovery after going through five consecutive quarters of sales decline and several transactions that ended badly for the company, several management changes over the past four years and various strategic errors.
The average pay of major public companies CEOs was $9.6 million in 2011, according to the pay research company Equilar. HP shareholders will vote on the pay package for Whitman and other executives at the annual meeting which will be held on March 20 in Mountain View, California. However, the vote is only advisory and the company doesn’t have to follow it.
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