J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) directors raised CEO Jamie Dimon’s total compensation by 35% to $27 million for 2015, a regulatory filing on Thursday showed.
But the board cut the cash portion and tied three-fourths of the total to more performance-sensitive stock awards, the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said.
The company pegged Dimon’s base salary at $1.5 million, the same as a year earlier, and set his variable compensation at $5 million in cash and $20.5 million in performance share units.
A year earlier the cash portion was $7.4 million and $11.1 million of stock came in more secure restricted stock units.
The package was changed to tie more of Dimon’s compensation to objective measures of performance and leave less leeway for judgment and is a response to investor complaints that Dimon’s pay was too arbitrary, according to a person familiar with the matter.
How Dimon’s pay is set is sensitive at J.P. Morgan. At the company’s last annual meeting in May, Dimon contended that criticism of the company’s compensation by services advising institutional investors on proxy votes was off base in its view that more restrictive formulas are better.
The services usually comment on compensation packages once companies fill their annual proxy statements discussing rationales for pay. J.P. Morgan’s proxy is expected in April, according to Thursday’s filing, which also said the proxy will include more details of the latest pay decisions the board of directors made on Tuesday for executives.
The decisions include raises of $1.5 million to $18.5 million for COO Matthew Zames and for Daniel Pinto, the CEO for the corporate and investment bank, according to the person familiar with the matter. Compensation for Mary Erdoes, the asset management CEO, is rising to $18 million from $16.5 million compensation for CFO Marianne Lake goes to $11 million from $10 million.
