Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) CEO Raymond Elliott’s salary got a haircut on paper last year, dropping from about $33.5 million in 2009 to $4.9 million.*
But those figures were vastly inflated, due to about $29 million in stock option awards he received upon taking the reins at Boston Scientific. Absent those awards, Elliot’s take-home was roughly $4 million in base salary and bonuses.
Read more MassDevice.com coverage of Boston Scientific
Elliott’s base pay actually rose last year, doubling to $1.2 million compared with the $600,000 he took home in 2009. This year, he also took home an additional $3.7 million in options, awards and other compensation for a total of $4.9 million, according to regulatory filings, for a total increase of 22.5 percent.
Elliott, who took over the CEO position in the summer of 2009 from James Tobin, has worked to remake Boston Scientific into a leaner and more focused company. Besides selling off its neuromodulation business to Stryker for $1.5 billion, the company has replaced more than 75 percent of its senior management over the past year.
The results have been mixed. Boston Scientific posted nearly $8 billion in sales last year, down 3.7 percent, and was unable to swing a profit in 2011. Elliot told investors on a conference call recently that the hard times were part-and-parcel with setting a listing ship back on course.
“Somewhere along the way, you have to bite the bullet and do the right stuff,” he said.
*Correction, March 31, 2011: Due an editor’s error, this article originally reported that Elliott’s base pay was cut last year, when it in fact rose. Return to the corrected sentence.
