GM May Weigh Plan to Double Smith Pension

General Motors Corp.’s board of directors will be asked to double the pension for retiring Chairman Roger B. Smith, whose company lost 11 percentage points in market share during his leadership, it was reported Tuesday.

The Dayton Daily News, in a copyright article, said the new plan would increase Smith’s pension from $550,000 to $1.1 million a year.

The company’s board of directors said the retirement plan for top GM executives is non-competitive and shortchanges them.

Union officials at GM plants in the Dayton area greeted the bid for higher executive pensions cooly and said it may complicate upcoming negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and the Big Three car makers.

The current executive retirement plan for Smith, who will step down July 31, bases his pension on his salary. The company’s proxy statement, which recently went out to GM shareholders, said the revised plan computes pensions by combining salaries, bonuses and stock awards.

Proxies list issues on which shareholders vote. Results of the vote will be announced at GM’s annual meeting May 25 in Detroit.

“The (current) retirement benefits are extremely uncompetitive,” company spokesman Terrence Sullivan said, explaining that the company needs higher executive pensions to attract and retain top-level managers.

The proxy says GM’s board of directors studied other companies’ retirement plans and requested the increase for GM officers after finding that their current pensions ranked in the bottom 21%.

Sullivan said he did not know which companies the directors surveyed.