Outgoing Philip Morris Int'l CEO made $24M

[March 29, 2013]  RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Philip Morris International Inc., the world's second-biggest cigarette company, awarded its CEO Louis Camilleri a compensation package valued at more than $24.7 million in fiscal 2012, up about 23 percent from the previous year, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing.

The pay package came in a year when the seller of Marlboro and other brands overseas saw its net income grow 2.4 percent to $8.8 billion. Revenue excluding excise taxes rose about 1 percent to $31.4 billion. Shipments rose more than 1 percent to 927 billion cigarettes.

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

His salary was $1.75 million and he received a $7.5 million performance-based bonus. The value of his stock awards increased 65 percent to $15 million.

The 58-year-old Camilleri also received other compensation worth $460,239, which included personal flights on company planes valued at about $178,137, and a car allowance of $19,602.

In 2011, Camilleri's compensation was valued at $20.1 million.

Philip Morris International, which has offices in Lausanne, Switzerland, and New York, also announced that it will hold its annual meeting on May 8 in New York, where shareholders will elect 13 directors to its board.

Camilleri is stepping down as CEO after the annual meeting and will be replaced by the company's current chief operating officer, Andre Calantzopoulos. Camilleri will remain as chairman.

Second in size only to state-controlled China National Tobacco Corp., Philip Morris International was spun off in 2008 from Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., owner of Philip Morris USA, which sells Marlboro and other Philip Morris brands in the U.S.

Camilleri was CEO of Altria in 2002, when it first embarked on a restructuring that led to the spin-off of Kraft Foods Inc., then the separation of the two cigarette makers.

The Associated Press 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 MICHAEL FELBERBAUM]

Michael Felberbaum can be reached at http://twitter.com/MLFelberbaum.

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