Canadian Wheat Board chief executive officer Ian White is being paid significantly more than his two immediate predecessors in the job.
During the four months of the 2007-08-crop year in which White served as CEO (from March 31 to July 31, 2008), he received a base salary of $211,783 and benefits worth $22,686.
The numbers are contained in the board’s recently released annual report.
Extrapolated over 12 months, that works out to annual base pay of $703,407 and benefits of $68,058.
Former CEO Adrian Measner received annual base salary of $264,063 during his four years on the job, ending with his firing in December 2006. Benefits were not made public.
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Greg Arason, who served as interim CEO from December 2006 until March 2008, received an average annual salary of $373,500. Again, no benefits are reported.
Asked if those numbers indicate the previous CEOs were underpaid, CWB chair Larry Hill declined to comment, saying companies hiring senior executives have to pay the salary that’s required to acquire the individual they want.
When it came time to replace Arason with a permanent CEO, the board set up a search committee including elected directors and federal government officials. That committee hired an executive search firm, which conducted a survey to determine typical salaries for comparable jobs in the industry.
When the board met with White, it relied on that survey as a guideline in negotiations.
“We feel the salary, given the information we had, was reasonable for a position with that degree of responsibility,” said Hill, adding it was in the middle of the range reported in the survey.
“I’m certainly pleased with Mr. White’s performance. People have to earn their salary and I certainly think he’s doing that.”
He added White is a bargain compared with some of the salaries paid to CEOs in similar positions.
For example, Viterra chief executive officer Mayo Schmidt took home a salary of $1.01 million and total compensation of $2.23 million in 2007, according to a survey by BusinessWeek magazine.
That pales in comparison with other CEOs, like Canadian National Railway’s E. Hunter Harrison, with a salary of $1.6 million and total compensation of $12.4 million, Agrium CEO Michael Wilson ($2.7 million and $16.4 million) and Hugh Grant of Monsanto ($1.3 million and $15.6 million).
“Farmers certainly wouldn’t accept those kinds of numbers,” said Hill.
He added the board is not required to release salaries of its top executives, but chooses to do so in the interests of transparency for farmers.
Other CWB salaries listed in the annual report were $381,707 for chief operating officer Ward Weisensel, $293,166 for chief financial officer Brita Chell, $274,922 for vice-president strategic planning Graham Paul and $252,849 for vice-president marketing Gord Flaten.
