Microsoft didn’t have the best fiscal year of 2015, as both the company’s operating income and earnings per share declined. However, that did not stop Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella from bringing home a fat paycheck. Nadella earned nearly $18 million for the last fiscal year.
Of this money, $12 million of it came in stocks, as reported by the company’s filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nadella was also paid 120% of his targeted bonus salary, which was good for a cool $4.3 million. And then of course he received his baseline salary of an additional $1.2 million. Adding that up brings the total to a $17.5 million payday. Not too bad for someone whose company is somewhat underperforming.
However, there might be another reason that Microsoft was eager to pay Nadella this large amount of money. Based on his contract, the CEO would have earned a staggering $20 million if Microsoft had terminated him. Nadella was actually cheaper to retain than to let go.
Microsoft is obviously defending their CEO’s salary. The company says that even though operating income and earnings per share both declined, steady progress was made in terms of creating opportunities for future growth.
Furthermore, the company went on to say that Nadella made a transformation of the company’s culture, leading Microsoft to a better future of mobile devices and cloud storage, in addition to their line of operating systems for personal computers.
The company is reportedly pleased with the way Nadella presented Microsoft to customers, partners and investors, and employees are said to be happy with their CEO.
Earlier this year, Microsoft reported $93 billion in total earnings, which was an increase of 10% from the previous year. However, net income was only $12.2 billion, which was down significantly from $22.1 billion the year prior.
The company is set to report its first quarter results for the fiscal year of 2016 later this week.
Microsoft’s major offering of 2015 was the launch of Windows 10.
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