CEO gets $44 million severance package after working one day

[CptStern]

When Duke Energy announced its merger with Progress Energy last year, the two companies agreed that Progress CEO Bill Johnson would assume the same position at the combined company. So he did: On June 27, Johnson signed a three-year contract to helm Duke. When the merger went into effect on July 2, he assumed the position of CEO. And then, on July 3 at midnight, Johnson resigned

Despite his short-lived tenure, Mr. Johnson will receive exit payments worth as much as $44.4 million, according to Duke. That includes $7.4 million in severance, a nearly $1.4 million cash bonus, a special lump-sum payment worth up to $1.5 million and accelerated vesting of his stock awards, according to a Duke regulatory filing Tuesday night. Mr. Johnson gets the lump-sum payment as long as he cooperates with Duke and doesn’t disparage his former employer, the filing said.
Under his exit package, Mr. Johnson also will receive approximately $30,000 to reimburse him for relocation expenses.

So assuming that he worked for a full eight hours on Monday, that comes out to a nice $5.5 million an hour — some 765,000 times the national minimum wage. His relocation alone is over half the average annual salary for an American worker.​

http://grist.org/news/duke-ceo-bill-johnson-resigns-after-one-day-gets-44-million-in-severance/​

 

[Vegeta897]

That is an obscene amount of money, but it would be silly to say he worked one day just because it was one day under the merged company. He was still the CEO of Progress for however long he was before the merger.

 

[JUL3]

He resigned on my birthday. That is all.

 

[Krynn72]

The dude worked for that company since 1995. Just because it merged with another company and got a new name doesn't mean he only worked there for a day. This is just people being stupid.

 

[kineaesth]

That said, perhaps he stayed as CEO of the new company for a day to get the benefits he knew he'd receive if he resigned

 

[Krynn72]

It is strange to me that he got severance for quitting. I thought you only got that if you were laid off?

EDIT: Apparently it was a forced resignation, so yeah, basically laid-off without it being called "laid off". It was probably some way to circumvent taxes or something. Like when I bought my car from my mom for one dollar, because otherwise it'd be considered a "gift" which would have made me pay tax on it's value.