April 21, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MONTREAL – Valeant Pharmaceuticals awarded its top five executives approximately $123 million in compensation in 2014, about five times the $23.8 million they earned in 2013, The Montreal Gazette reported reported.
Michael Pearson, the company chief executive officer, took home $10.28 million in compensation, the lowest compensation of the five executives. Pearson owns about3 percent of the company. His base salary for 2014 was $1.9 million in salary, $8 million in cash incentives and $368,235 in other compensation. In 2013 Pearson had a base salary of $1.75 million, $4.8 million incentives and $458,203 other amounts for a total of $7 million in 2013, the Gazette said.
Starting in 2015 he will receive no base salary, according to the company proxy statement. He has a short-term incentive pay goal of $6 million for 2015.
Ari Kellen, executive vice president, took home the largest amount of total compensation with $50.6 million. Kellen has been with Valeant since 2014, according to the company proxy filing. In 2014 he had a base salary of $750,000, which will repeat in 2015.
Howard Schiller, Valeant’s chief financial officer, earned $27.1 million in total compensation. He has a base salary of $1 million.
Robert Chai-Onn, head of the company’s business development and the company’s chief legal officer, earned $23.9 million in total compensation. He joined Valeant in 2004, serving in various executive roles. For 2014 and 2015 he has a base salary of $750,000.
Pavel Mirovsky, general manager of the company’s European division, took home $10.9 million. Mirovsky joined the company in March 2011 upon Valeant’s acquisition of PharmaSwiss. A medical doctor by training, Mirovsky worked as an expert for the World Health Organization in Africa. In 2014 he had a base salary of $550,000, which will repeat in 2015.
Valeant, which specializes in eye medications, including glaucoma-treating medication Vesneo, reported the compensation in a proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 9. In its filing the company said high executive compensation was commiserate with achieving revenue goals. In 2014 Valeant reported total revenues increased by 43 percent over 2013.
Valeant said its compensation committee believes the executives exceeded the financial goals set at the beginning of 2014.
“Our compensation philosophy is to align management’s pay with long-term TSR (tax shareholder return). We richly reward for outstanding TSR performance, but pay significantly less for below average TSR performance,” the company said in its filing.
Although the company failed in its bid to acquire Allergan, the company said the effort still generated $287 million in net profit for Valeant. However, earlier this month Valeant acquired Salix Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. for approximately $11 billion in cash, making the Valeant one of the leading provider of treatments for gastrointestinal disorders.
