Killinger's Eight-Figure Severance Package

When the mortgage market went south and started dragging Washington Mutual down with it, the aggressive mortgage lender's chief executive, Kerry K. Killinger, turned down his annual bonus last year.

Instead, he soldiered on with only his $1 million annual salary and a few assorted odds and ends ($3.4 million in vesting stock options, $387,920 in supplemental pension payments, $800 to cover income tax on a gift, that sort of thing).

Now that he's actually leaving the company, which seems to be in a race to the bottom with Lehman Brothers, Killinger is making for lost time. Or at least for lost compensation.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today, Washington Mutual said that Killinger's departure "constitutes a termination other than for 'cause'."

That makes him eligible for a severance package worth more than $22 million, according to the company's most recent annual report.

Most of it -- $16.5 million -- comes from a clause in his employment agreement that promises him a lump sum payment of three times his annual compensation if he was terminated without cause and without the company being acquired.

The rest, about $5.8 million, comes from the immediate vesting of restricted stock he's been awarded over the years.

Of course, the annual report was written a while ago, and it assumes those shares are worth $13.61 each. Killinger, like other shareholders, has been hurt by the stock's fall: Washington Mutual shares closed today at a mere $2.83.

That suggests his restricted stock is worth something closer to $1.2 million, which would mean Killinger's actual walking-away money is closer to $17.7 million.Still, not bad money when added to the deferred compensation and multiple pensions for which the 58-year-old executive is entitled.

Killinger's severance package may well add to the hubbub being raised in Congress over the $24 million in farewell pay doled out to the men who ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Richard Syron, who was forced out at Freddie when Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson moved to bail out the company, is in line for as much as $15.5 million, according to David Schmidt of the executive compensation consulting firm James F. Reda & Associates. Former Fannie C.E.O. Daniel Mudd could get as much as $8.4 million.

Two Democratic Senators, Charles Schumer of New York and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, objected to the payouts in a letter to James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

"We find it way out of line that these two executives will be rewarded with millions of dollars in bonus compensation at a time when taxpayer dollars may have to be deployed to cover any financial losses caused by errors in management," they wrote.

The lawmakers, who sit on the Senate Banking Committee, added that taxpayers should not "enrich the same individuals who are responsible for preventable financial problems that have weakened Fannie's and Freddie's ability to weather the current crisis in the financial markets."

Critics have been especially harsh about Syron's severance deal, which awards him $8.8 million in cash to replace stock grants and options that are now worth little or nothing because of Freddie's near-collapse.

by Mark Stein

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