JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted Jamie Dimon’s pay 35 percent, tying most of the package to future performance after a record share of investors rejected the bank’s compensation practices last year.
The bank awarded Dimon, its chief executive officer and chairman, $27 million for 2015, up from $20 million a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing Thursday. The package includes $20.5 million in performance share units, a new element of his pay tied to future targets. Proxy advisers had complained last year that the company lacked concrete goals for its executives.
Under Dimon, who has led JPMorgan since 2006, the bank managed to increase profit last year 12 percent to $24.4 billion despite stagnant revenue. He accomplished that by trimming expenses almost 4 percent to $59 billion. The company’s shares climbed 5.5 percent in 2015, outperforming the 3.5 percent decline of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index.
In May, JPMorgan’s board said it was weighing changes to executive compensation after a record low percentage of shareholders approved their pay packages. Roughly 60 percent voted in favor of the measure at the annual meeting, the lowest since so-called say-on-pay proposals were started at the New York-based bank in 2009, and down from 79 percent in 2014 and 94 percent in 2013.
Proxy advisors Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis & Co. had recommended investors vote against the pay resolution, saying the bank lacks preset goals to determine compensation and didn’t give a good reason for giving Dimon a $7.4 million cash bonus for 2014.
Dimon was paid $15.2 million for 2009 and $23 million in each of the two years that followed. For 2012, his pay was cut in half to $11.5 million after the bank’s board said he bore responsibility for the London Whale derivatives trading debacle. He got $20 million a year for 2013 and 2014.