General Electric Co. will remunerate its new chief executive Larry Culp, with up to $21 million a year for four years. To add to this there are options for issuing the new chief with hundreds of millions of dollars, with these payments tied to GE’s stock performance, according to The Wall Street Journal. The big payoff will come if GE’s shares rise at least 50 percent and stay there on average over 30 trading days between now and 2022.
Culp’s appointment follows on from outgoing CEO John Flannery. Flannery was GE’s eleventh CEO and the company’s tenth Chairman, although he only spent around one year in the role. GE ditched Flannery, according to The Financial Times, based on progress being too slow and due to a lower-than-expected profits outlook. Flannery’s tenure was the shortest of any previous leader in the company’s 126-year history. During the year GE’s share price fell by more than 50 percent.
H. Lawrence “Larry” Culp Jr. becomes the first outsider to run GE in the company’s history. Prior to his appointment, Culp worked at Danaher Corporation in Washington, D.C. Danaher’s products are concentrated in the fields of design, manufacturing, and marketing of industrial, healthcare and consumer products.
As to why Culp has been offered such a lucrative package, the Boston Globe has the basis of an answer: “Larry Culp is a nuts-and-bolts executive with little name recognition outside of the business world, noted for turning a little-known industrial conglomerate into a hugely profitable growth machine.”
