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Cisco Systems Chief Executive John Chambers saw his compensation go from $9.2 million to $18.9 million in fiscal 2010, as the company showed signs of recovery from a recession-related slump.
The increase was the result of a rise in Chambers’ stock and option awards and his cash bonus, the Wall Street Journal said Saturday, citing Cisco’s initial proxy statement.
The stock and options were valued at $13.9 million, up from $6.7 million in fiscal 2009, and Chambers’ salary rose 1.9 percent from last year, to $382,212. The CEO also bagged a $4.6 million bonus as part of Cisco’s cash incentive plan, the Journal said. He received no such bonus in fiscal 2009–getting, instead, a $2 million “discretionary” cash bonus–and that year he also saw his compensation fall 46 percent from fiscal 2008’s $17.1 million.
“The core of Cisco’s executive compensation philosophy continues to be to pay for performance,” a Cisco representative told the Journal.
Last month, Cisco fell just short of revenue expectations for the fourth quarter. At the time, Chambers attributed the miss to economic uncertainty in the quarter, which made customers gun shy about spending. Still, the company’s profits were up 79 percent year-over-year, and Chambers said then that Cisco’s “strategy and vision is absolutely working. We are gaining market share and growing revenue.”
In fiscal 2010, Cisco’s sales rose 10.9 percent, and net income increased 26.6 percent, from fiscal 2009, the Journal quoted the proxy as saying.
