Sheldon Adelson and Caesars boss Mark Frissora scored super paydays in 2017.
Las Vegas Sands more has more than doubled Adelson’s total compensation to $26.1 million as part of a new employment agreement awarded its 84-year-old chairman and CEO.
The package includes potential cash bonuses up to $12.5 million and $5 million in salary for 2017, plus $4.21 million in equity awards and taxable perks worth $4.38 million, most of it for personal security.
But all that pales before the more than $1 billion he was paid in dividends on his LVS shares and those held by his wife and various trusts benefiting family members, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Collectively they own more than half the stock.
Adelson’s LVS shares are by far the single greatest source of his roughly $36 billion fortune, the 20thlargest in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
As for Frissora, Caesars Entertainment’s successful emergence from a protracted and complex Chapter 11 restructuring has proved massively lucrative.
The company awarded its CEO $29.4 million in total compensation for 2017. He received $2 million in salary, a $4.5 million cash bonus, $16.5 million in retention-restricted stock, a long-term cash award of $6 million and $400,000 for re-priced options, the Las Vegas-based gaming giant said in a regulatory filing.
The re-priced stock options were granted in the midst of the restructuring. Caesars reduced the strike price for more than 1 million options granted to Frissora, CFO Eric Hession and two other top executives to $9.45 a share from prices ranging from $11.51 to $21.18.
While not considered a laudable corporate practice by investor watchdog groups, Caesars said the re-pricing was necessary to keep executives in the fold during the company’s bankruptcy woes, allowing it to offer equity-based pay without granting new awards, which were limited while the restructuring was in the works, according to the filing.
