Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Funds

When William D. Perez was unceremoniously booted from the top job at Nike in 2006 after only about a year on the job, many people were sympathetic to his plight.

After all, he'd quit as chief executive of S.C. Johnson & Son, where he was well-liked and respected, only to run into the famously difficult Nike founder and chairman Philip Knight, whom he was hired to succeed.

But Perez is having the last laugh. Just months after he left Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, he was asked to succeed another founding family C.E.O., this time at the William Wrigley Jr. Co. in Chicago.

Not only that, but his severance deal with Nike gave him two years' salary, at $1.4 million annually (as well as another $2 million or so in vesting stock rights).

He was, in effect, being paid twice.

This week, Wrigley disclosed that it had paid Perez about $6 million last year. That includes $1.4 million in base salary, $2.1 million in stock and option awards, and almost $2 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation.

Perez decided to defer this last bit. What with the $1.4 million still coming from Nike, he could certain afford to be thrifty.

by Mark Stein