Murphy Oil’s CEO and President Roger W. Jenkins is taking a 25% cut in pay as the company, now headquartered in Houston, announced several compensation decisions affecting the company’s executives.
In making the announcement, the company, formerly headquartered in El Dorado, Arkansas said the changes were driven by changes in the company’s asset portfolio, evolving industry practices and shareholder feedback.
In April 2020, the company reduced the CEO’s salary by 35% and salaries of other executives were cut by as much as 30% with an average of 22%. Director cash retainers were trimmed by 35% and the cash retainer for the board of directors chairman was slashed 70%.
For 2021, the salaries of the executives were partially restored but none will have their salary fully restored to levels before April of last year.
“We believe the changes we have made serve to better align the compensation of our executives and directors with the interests of our shareholders, and support our focus on cash flow generation, capital returns and environmental stewardship,” stated the company in its announcement of decisions reached by the board’s Executive Compensation Committee.
The Key change for 2021 was making the salary of the chief executive officer approximately 25% less than the salary he had at the start of 2020. Further, his 2021 equity incentive grant will also be about 25% below the 2020 grant value.
Jenkins won’t be the only one affected as the company agreed that director cash compensation will be about 27% less than a year ago.
The performance metrics under the company’s annual incentive plan will also be changed by putting an emphasis on capital returns, adding a free cash flow metric and putting more emphasis on cost management.
Murphy also decided to include a decrease in the emphasis on voluem0based metrics and adding a greenhouse gas emissions reduction metric for which “aggressive goals must be achieved to earn a payout.”
Source: BusinessWire
