MasterCard CEO made $11.3M in 2012, up 35 pct

[April 27, 2013]  NEW YORK (AP) -- MasterCard boosted CEO Ajay Banga's pay package last year by 35 percent to $11.3 million, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing.

The higher pay came in a year when the credit card company earned $2.8 billion, up 45 percent from a year earlier, on higher processing fees and a continued expansion in operations overseas.

The CEO's compensation was disclosed in an annual proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Banga's salary was $983,333, up 9 percent from 2011. Most of the increase in pay came from stock awards, including stock options, valued at $7.5 million, up 52 percent.

The 53-year-old Banga, who has been CEO since 2010, also received a performance-based cash bonus of $2.5 million and perks totaling $348,000.

His total pay in 2011 was $8.3 million.

In the SEC filing, the company also announced it will hold its annual meeting on June 18, where shareholders will elect 12 directors to its board.

The AP formula calculates an executive's total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest that the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The value that a company assigned to an executive's stock and option awards for 2012 was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company's stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options.

[Associated Press; By BERNARD CONDON]

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