Former General Motors chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, ousted in March by the Obama administration, will retire in August with a package worth US$8.6m in the first five years, the company has said.
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Wagoner’s retirement will take effect on 1 August and he will draw sharply reduced benefits after GM’s federally financed bankruptcy, Reuters reported.
Wagoner’s retirement package is worth about 60% less than it would have been at the end of last year, before the automaker fell into a government-funded bankruptcy and its assets were sold to a new GM, federal regulatory filings showed.
The former top GM executive reached a retirement agreement with the old GM, now renamed Motors Liquidation, on 8 July and will retire officially from the new GM taking benefit cuts consistent with other retirees, the company said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission cited by the news agency.
Over the first five years of retirement, Wagoner will be paid almost $8.6m, down from the nearly $23m he was entitled to receive at the end of last year.
Based on 32 years service to GM, Wagoner is entitled to an annual $74,030 under the salaried retirement programme and five instalments of about $1.64m under the executive retirement plan.
Wagoner had been entitled to five payments of more than $4.5m each as of the end of 2008 under GM’s executive plan and $68,900 per year under the salaried programme, according to the last GM annual report.
Wagoner will continue to receive personal liability insurance until 1 January and also will receive an existing life insurance policy or its cash value, currently nearly $2.6m.
Wagoner was forced out as CEO in March, but nominally remained on the automaker’s payroll at the $1 a year salary he had agreed to take until retirement terms could be set, Reuters noted.
