CEO pay at Charlotte's largest companies
Plus: New Davidson president says he's 'coming home'; Your guide to local voter guides; Sports gambling coming soon to Kings Mountain; Panthers' top draft pick reminisces on Pizza Peel, Matthews Alive
Good morning! Today is Monday, May 2, 2022. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.
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BofA’s Moynihan tops executive pay list with $23.3M in 2021; LendingTree’s Lebda last (for once)
by Tony Mecia
It’s that time of year when public companies disclose their executives’ pay — and we’ve got the list of Charlotte CEOs and how much money they made in 2021.
No surprise that some of Charlotte’s largest companies also had the best-paid CEOs: Brian Moynihan of Bank of America topped our list, with $23.3M in total compensation, followed by the CEOs of Honeywell, Lowe’s and Duke Energy.
But size doesn’t explain everything: For instance, David Smith, CEO of Fortune 500 company Sonic Automotive, made $6.51M in compensation last year — less than the CEOs of Coke Consolidated, Sealed Air and Driven Brands, which have far less in annual sales than Sonic does.
A few other interesting notes:
AvidXchange, which went public last fall and now must disclose its executive pay, paid CEO Michael Praeger $7.92M in compensation in 2021, according to securities filings.
At the bottom of the list is LendingTree’s Doug Lebda, who had $1.37M in total compensation last year. But don’t feel too bad — since we started assembling these lists in 2019, Lebda has topped it twice, with compensation of $42M in 2018 and $52M in 2020 (plus $60M in 2017), securities documents show.
13 of the 22 CEOs on our list received raises in 2021.
We included in our list Mecklenburg County’s largest public companies — those on the most recent Fortune 1000 list — as well as other notable publicly traded businesses. (It’s not the full list of Mecklenburg’s public companies.)
It’s also worth noting that these numbers are total compensation as reported by the companies, and the figures often include stock grants or options that are valued at the time they are issued — which means that it is value on paper, not actual cash, and that those numbers can rise and fall as the company’s stock does.
OK, so here is the list The Ledger compiled, with company name, CEO, 2021 total compensation and the difference (raise/pay cut) compared with 2020:
Bank of America: Brian Moynihan, $23.3M, -9%
Honeywell: Darius Adamczyk, $20.57M, +14%
Lowe’s: Marvin Ellison, $17.87M, -23%
Duke Energy: Lynn Good, $16.45M, +13%
Driven Brands: Jonathan Fitzpatrick, $14.84M, +107%
Coke Consolidated: Frank Harrison, $13.55M, +9%
Nucor: Leon Topalian, $11.62M, +3%
Ingersoll Rand: Vicente Reynal, $10.61M, -13%
Truist: William Rogers, $10.4M, +19%
Sealed Air: Edward Doheny, $9.67M, -18%
Dentsply Sirona: Donald Casey, $9.25M, +29%
Albemarle: Kent Masters Jr., $9.04M, +83%
AvidXchange: Michael Praeger, $7.92M, +230%
Brighthouse Financial: Eric Steigerwalt, $7.91M, -3%
Jeld-Wen: Gary Michel, $7.51M, -10%
SPX: Eugene Lowe, $6.52M, +7%
Sonic Automotive: David Smith, $6.51M, +29%
Premier: Michael Alkire, $5.72M, +14%
Cato: John Cato, $5.47M, +95%
Curtiss-Wright: David Adams, $4.07M, -54%
CommScope: Charles Treadway, $2.86M, -69%
LendingTree: Doug Lebda, $1.37M, -97%
Today’s supporting sponsors are Landon A. Dunn, attorney-at-law in Matthews…
… and T.R. Lawing Realty:
New Davidson College prez: ‘I’m coming home’
Davidson College named a new president on Friday: Doug Hicks, a 1990 Davidson graduate who holds a Master of Divinity degree from Duke and a doctorate in religion and economics from Harvard. Hicks, 54, will succeed Carol Quillan, who announced last year that she was stepping down after 11 years.
In a 13-minute address on Friday, Hicks outlined his hopes for the future and reflected on his experience at the college more than three decades ago. Some highlights:
I’m filled with enthusiasm about the future that we can build together at Davidson.
I am nostalgic for my early years here at Davidson. I am excited about, and I accepted this job, not for that past but for the future we are going to build together. …
Davidson College, this special place, welcomed me, a kid from Indianapolis, 36 years ago. My high school English teacher, the spouse of an alum, told me one day after class that she was going to nominate me for a scholarship at some place called “Davidson College.” Boy, am I glad that she did.
My teacher was the first of many people connected to Davidson who shaped the course of my life. Once I arrived here, Davidson became home. And I’m coming home.
It challenged me, and then it showed me the world: the world of nations and societies, different beliefs and understandings — a world of beautiful cultures and devastating depravations.
And Davidson offered me a world of friends, whose life experiences differed so much from my own … I learned to collaborate with my peers, in the classroom and student organizations, on the baseball diamond — or as I like to say, on the baseball bench.
I learned to stand up for justice, including demonstrating before the board of trustees regarding apartheid in South Africa.
My experience is just one personal version of the wider Davidson vision. Our college is in the business of changing lives. …
Our world right now needs the values of Davidson. It needs our commitments, and above all, it needs our people. I offer you my gratitude and my enthusiasm, my personal and scholarly commitments as we join in this work together.
This is such a special place, and I am so honored and humbled to be here. I can’t wait to get started.
—TM
Your guide to Charlotte voter guides
There’s an election coming up in about two weeks. Voting has already started. And even though it’s a primary election, the results will play a big part in determining who will run our city and county, and also our state and national governments.
There are dozens of candidates and lots of races, and of course your ballot is different than others in other parts of Charlotte. But if you can invest a little bit of time, you can be a more informed voter.
◼️ Step 1: What’s on your ballot? Go to the county’s sample ballot (by address), or the state’s (by name). Remember that if you’re unaffiliated, you can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary. In Charlotte, there is generally more action on the Democratic side — including a closely fought city council at-large race and county commissioners’ at-large race — but Republicans have a contested Senate race and some state legislative races, too.
◼️ Step 2: Read up. Now that you know what the races are, you might start with an overview, like Axios Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County primary guide, or WFAE’s overview. They don’t give a lot of detail about candidates, but they provide good introductions to the main local races, and the websites are user-friendly, with no distracting ads, frequent prompts to log in, etc.
◼️ Step 3: Go deeper. You might also want to read candidates’ responses to questionnaires. The downside is that nobody is fact-checking them, and the candidates present themselves as they want to be perceived. But it’s better than nothing. A few of our favorites:
The Charlotte Observer. The Observer’s voter guide has the most complete information you will find anywhere. You might have to hunt for it a little bit, but the paper solicited questionnaires even for candidates for state legislative races. Don’t go to the main voter guide page, because it is kind of a jumble. Instead, go to the article on the different local races, which has links to the questionnaires from different candidates. You’ll have to click on each candidate and navigate around pop-up ads, and if you’re not an Observer subscriber, you might run into its paywall — which you can often get around by going into your web browser’s incognito mode (usually Control+Shift+N on Windows and Shift+Command+N on a Mac).
WSOC. WSOC has compiled helpful candidate questionnaires for the major races: City Council, mayor, county commission and sheriff. And each grouping is on a single page, so you don’t have to click through to all of the candidates.
Common Cause NC. Common Cause also has brief responses to candidate questionnaires for mayor, City Council and county commission. The entire file is on a single, easy-to-navigate webpage, which is nice.
Some people also find endorsements to be helpful. The Observer’s picks are available only to Observer subscribers (if you’re desperate to read them and have a library card, you can go on the library’s site and search Observer archives for free). Other organizations making endorsements include The Charlotte Post and the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
➡️ Do you have any other locally focused resources you find helpful? Drop us a line, and we’ll include them in a future newsletter. —TM
You Ask, We Answer: Sports book to open at Kings Mountain casino ‘this spring’; table poker outlook uncertain
Today we bring you the latest installment of “You Ask, We Answer,” The Ledger’s effort to help satisfy your burning🔥 development questions.
As we always say, there’s no rezoning request we can’t track down; no land sale we can’t sniff out; no mysterious bulldozers we can’t explain. Have a question? Ask us here.
Today’s question comes from reader Chris:
Do you know if there will be a poker room at the new Kings Mountain casino? Currently the World Series of Poker hosts events in Cherokee, so I was just wondering if they will have them closer to home.
We put the question to Delaware North, the gaming operator that’s working with the Catawba Two Kings Casino in Kings Mountain, about 45 minutes west of Charlotte. Senior communications specialist Marc Heintzman told us:
Through its gaming compact, the current temporary casino offers electronic table games for blackjack and other popular table games. The compact also includes the possibility to add video poker, and we are currently exploring that option. We do not have a timetable for construction on the permanent casino but hope to announce that later this year. … We are currently reviewing all options for table and video games, including poker, that will be available at the permanent casino.
So that sounds like a definite maybe?
We took Chris’ question a step further and asked about the possibility of sports gambling in Kings Mountain. The response:
An on-site sportsbook is planned to open later this spring.
Heintzman had no further details. The only other legal sports books in North Carolina are in Cherokee and Murphy, which are at least three hours west of Charlotte. —TM
In brief:
Corporate landlords: An impressive investigation produced by the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer looks at the rise of corporate investor-owned housing across North Carolina over the last decade and shows the impact it’s having on communities and people’s ability to use real estate to grow wealth. (Observer)
Weekend shootings: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police say three people were shot and killed over the weekend, but no suspects had been arrested in either of the killings as of Sunday. One shooting happened on Saturday near a hotel on Woodlawn Road, and on Friday night two people were shot at a business park northwest of uptown. There have been 28 homicides reported by CMPD so far this year. (WFAE)
Axios expands to Raleigh: Axios Charlotte’s sister publication, Axios Raleigh, debuted this morning. Written by two former News & Observer reporters, its first issue contained a look at CEO pay at Triangle companies, news of Fidelity adding 1,700 jobs in Research Triangle Park and information about a Raleigh coffee shop expanding into Durham. The issue was sponsored by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, whose ads promoted Charlotte’s rooftop bars and the U.S. National Whitewater Center and told Triangle readers that “Charlotte’s culinary scene is so hot right now that visitors can plan an entire trip around the food itinerary.”
Panthers’ pick has fond memories of Charlotte restaurants, Matthews festival: Panthers first-round pick Ickey Ekwonu, who grew up in Charlotte, told reporters in response to a question that his favorite Charlotte restaurants are Le Peep, The Improper Pig and The Pizza Peel. He said his favorite memory of Charlotte was going to the Matthews Alive festival as a kid, “back when I could fit on all the carnival rides,” and that the Labor Day weekend festival was “the first time I had fried Oreos.” He’s a 6’4”, 320-pound offensive tackle from N.C. State. (Panthers)
Taking stock
Unless you are a day trader, checking your stocks daily is unhealthy. So how about weekly? How local stocks of note fared last week (through Friday’s close), and year to date:
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project