Mozilo Takes Pay Cut; Doesn’t Want to be “Lightning Rod”

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News item: Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo is taking a pay cut because he doesn’t want to be ‘the lightning rod’ for criticism of the company. Well, I don’t want to be a 17-handicap golfer, either, but there I am. And there he is, making $120 million last year.

That’s $2.4 million a week, or about $500,000 every weekday, if you are scoring at home.

The Mozilo item is in the Wall Street Journal, a pay site, but you can find a short, and free summary, in Mark Lacter’s roundup of daily business headlines on LABizObserved. Snip: ‘I don’t want to be the lightning rod that casts any negativity on the company,’ he told the WSJ. So how much is the cut? Mozilo’s base salary, performance-based bonus and equity-incentive pay will be reduced by between 48 percent and 62 percent this year, depending on company performance (last year those items totaled $42 million). And he’ll still get a long-term incentive plan; last year, he picked up $72.2 million from exercising options.

The new policies won’t silence critics. ‘They’re slowly moving toward performance-based pay, but they’re not there yet,’ said Richard Ferlauto, director of pension and benefit policy for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.