Every month, Compliance Week publishes a list of the largest stock option grants and restricted stock awards during the previous period. The data and analysis are provided by compensation research firm Equilar.

THE DATA

Note

Please note that all values are rough “face value” numbers, which are calculated by data-provider Equilar, by multiplying the number of shares in the grant by the market price per share on the grant date.

Latest Data

The spreadsheet below will also include the “Top 10” lists for each month year-to-date in coming months.

View The Top Equity Awards Made In May 2007

Prior Years’ Data

View Equity Awards From Each Month In 2006

View Equity Awards From Each Month In 2005

View Equity Awards From Each Month In 2004

Source: Equilar Inc.

Option Grants

The largest stock option grants in May went to the top two officials at mining concern Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold: James Moffett, chairman, and Richard Adkerson, CEO. On May 11, both men received 1.5 million options with an exercise price of $72.92, carrying a face value of $109.4 million.

Apollo Group vice president Gregory Cappelli placed third, with a grant on May 25 of 1 million options carrying a face value of $48.47 million, based on an exercise price of $48.47.

Stock Awards

The largest restricted stock award made in May went to Lawrence Culp, president and CEO of Danaher Corp. Culp received 324,000 shares on May 15 with a face value of nearly $23 million, based on the award date stock price of $70.69.

A downloadable spreadsheet of the top stock option grants and restricted stock awards can be found in the box above, right, as can prior months’ data.

Performance-Based Awards

According to Equilar, the May equity awards demonstrate how companies are continuing to issue more performance-based grants and awards; institutional investors and proxy advisory firms have been urging companies to issue such awards for the past few years.

Less common are “premium-priced” awards, where the exercise price of the grant is higher than the stock price on the grant date. Such awards are not well loved by executives, as the awards are immediately “underwater;” the company’s stock price has to rise to the level of the exercise price for the award to have any value. On May 14, for example, Wabash National Corp. granted options to its chairman with an exercise price 16 percent higher than the company’s closing stock price of $14.55. And on May 11, DJO Inc. granted options to five executives with an exercise price 14 percent higher than the company’s closing stock price of $35.01.

Below is another example of performance-based grants awarded last month:

On May 3, Choicepoint granted options nine executives with performance-based vesting based on pre-determined increases in operating income for a three-year period.

Below are examples of restricted-stock awards given last month:

On May 1, Coca Cola Enterprises granted restricted stock units to five executives with the following performance-contingent vesting criteria:

“Vests upon satisfaction of both a service condition and a performance condition. The performance condition for 100 percent of the grant is that the closing price of the company stock must average, over 20 consecutive trading days, 125 percent of the closing price on May 1, 2007.”

On May 8, Midas granted restricted stock to five executives with the following performance-contingent vesting criteria:

“An amount equal to 33 1/3 percent of all of the shares granted shall immediately vest if, during the applicable annual measurement period, the total shareholder return on the Company's Common Stock exceeds the total shareholder return of the Standard and Poor’s 500 Stock Index.”

A downloadable spreadsheet of the top 10 equity awards in May 2007 and the rest of this year can be found in the box above, right. Also available are data from 2004, 2005, and 2006.

For related coverage, please select “Executive Compensation” in the left-hand column of any page on the Compliance Week Web site.