Wal-Mart Executives Lead Executive Pay List

The highest-paid executives in Northwest Arkansas are employed by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The Wal-Mart brass held the top five positions on the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s list of executive compensation. The same men held the top five slots in 1997, but H. Lee Scott Jr. and Bob Martin swapped positions as No. 4 and No. 5, respectively, in 1998.

David Glass, Wal-Mart’s president and CEO, was No. 1 with $10 million in total compensation during 1998, up 8.5 percent from $9.23 million the previous year.

For the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, Glass earned a salary of $1.13 million, down from $1.16 million the previous year. But he received a performance bonus of $5.44 million (compared with $1.1 million in 1997 and $377,580 in 1996) and exercised $3.36 million in stock options in 1998.

Glass was followed by Donald Soderquist, vice chairman, $6.4 million; Thomas Coughlin, executive vice president, $5.16 million; H. Lee Scott, who was promoted last year to vice chairman and chief operating officer, $3.8 million; and Bob Martin, an executive vice president over the international division who recently left the company, $3.7 million.

J.B. Hunt

Kirk Thompson, president and CEO of J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Springdale, leaped from No. 31 in 1997 to the No. 6 slot in this year’s list because he exercised $2.76 million in stock options during 1998.

Thompson’s salary was $409,615, up only 2.4 percent from $400,000 in 1997. His total compensation, though, was $3.23 million in 1998, up 647 percent from $432,105.

J.B. Hunt, as senior chairman of the company, brought in $440,051 in total compensation for 1998, down 7.3 percent from $474,728 in 1997.

Tyson Foods Inc.

Leland Tollett, who retired this past October as CEO of Tyson Foods Inc., had total compensation of $1.32 million in 1998. Last year, Tollett, who remains on Tyson’s executive board, had $630,000 in salary and $630,000 in a performance bonus.

Don Tyson, senior chairman of Tyson Foods, was No. 9 on the list with total compensation of $1.29 million, down 18.3 percent from $1.59 million in 1997.

Donald Wray, president and chief operating officer at Tyson Foods, had total compensation of $681,219, up 55 percent from $439,285 in 1997. Wayne Britt, Tyson’s CEO, made $567,777 in 1998, up 71.5 percent from 1997 when he was chief financial officer at Tyson Foods.

Baldor Electric Inc.

R.L. Qualls, vice chairman of Baldor, ranked No. 8 with $1.31 million in total compensation. Qualls’ salary of $175,000 was 44 percent less than the $315,000 he received in 1997. But, after exercising $927,625 in stock options in 1998, his total compensation of $1.31 million was twice what it had been in the previous year.

Other Baldor execs rounding out the top 11 were R.S. Boreham Jr., chairman, No. 10, with $946,131 in total compensation (down 58 percent from $2.26 million in 1997, but that included a $1.52 million stock option) and John McFarland, president, No. 11, with $861,942 in total compensation (up 66 percent from $518,787 in 1997).

Female Execs

Notably missing from the list of the highest-paid public company executives are women. Only two women are ranked.

Debbie Branch, senior vice president at Southwestern Energy Co. in Fayetteville, was No. 47 on the list with total compensation of $287,733, down 12.5 percent from 1997, when she exercised $35,875 in stock options. Branch’s salary, however, was $175,000, up 12.2 percent from $156,000 in 1997.

Carolyn Thomason, executive vice president at First Federal Bancshares of Arkansas Inc., was the other female on the list. Her total compensation was $246,746, down 1.3 percent from 1997. Her salary of $199,460 in 1998 was up 4.4 percent from $191,040 in 1997.