Ameren’s top executives saw their compensation decline in 2021 — with CEO pay creeping just below $10 million — according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing from the ӣƵ-based power utility.
The filing shows that Warner Baxter, who this year transitioned to a new role as the company’s executive chairman after eight years as president and CEO, received $9.81 million in compensation in 2021. That marked a 2.5% drop from the $10.06 million he received the year prior and interrupts a streak of annual pay increases he had received since taking the helm of the company. (For comparison, Baxter received $6.49 million in 2015, in his first full year as CEO.)
Marty Lyons, who was appointed president and CEO at the start of 2022, saw a steeper, 29% dip in pay last year, when he served as chairman and president for Ameren Missouri. His 2021 compensation was $4.31 million, compared with $6.07 million the year before.
People are also reading…
Still, the 2021 compensation for both Baxter and Lyons was higher than what either of them made in 2019 — when Baxter received $9.72 million, and Lyons was given $3.78 million.
For both Baxter and Lyons, base salary accounted for just a fraction of their pay. The bulk of their compensation stemmed from stock awards and incentives, with additional pay coming through six-figure boosts in pension value and in other forms — including perquisites for financial and tax planning.
The biggest year-to-year dip in Baxter’s pay came through changes to his pension value — with related earnings dropping from $1.37 million in 2020 to about $550,000 in 2021. Meanwhile, the decline in Lyons’ compensation was largely anchored by a $1.42 million drop in stock awards he received in 2021, versus a year earlier — falling from $3.85 million in awards given in 2020 to $2.43 million last year.
Ameren attributed Baxter’s decreased compensation mainly to adjustments in pension value. The company did not provide additional clarifications about what guided Lyons’ drop in pay.
In 2021, Baxter was paid 74 times as much as the $132,415 given to Ameren’s median employee, the filing said. Lyons’ compensation was more than 32 times greater than that amount.
Ameren said in the filing that its executive pay is based on that provided by similar utility companies, and noted that actual payouts hinge on factors including short- and long-term corporate performance, through its “pay-for-performance” policy.
Staff at the Missouri Public Service Commission, which oversees the state’s monopoly utilities, says that executive pay is typically considered a “cost of service” that the company is allowed to recover from ratepayers.
