Oleg Deripaska, billionaire chief executive of United Company RusAl, more than doubled his remuneration last year to $70 million, making him the world's highest paid aluminum executive.
His earnings included a $61.3 million stock bonus for overseeing the initial public offering of the world's biggest aluminum maker in Hong Kong last year, RusAl said in a statement Thursday.
Deripaska, who owns 48 percent of RusAl, earned $27.9 million in 2009.
RusAl's net income more than tripled to $2.87 billion last year as net debt dropped to $11.5 billion. Deripaska, who earned 17 times more than his first deputy, Vladislav Solovyov, attracted investors, including Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-Shing and Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok, to buy stock in the IPO that raised $2.24 billion in January 2010.
Klaus Kleinfeld, chief executive of Alcoa, the biggest U.S. aluminum producer, received $13.3 million in compensation last year, of which $1.4 million was base salary. Xiong Weiping, chief executive and chairman of Aluminum Corporation of China, had 382,000 yuan ($58,281) in salary and a 191,000 yuan bonus for 2009, according to the latest data available.
The offering, the first by a Russian company in Hong Kong, at a time when RusAl's debts were close to $17 billion, led the company to reward Deripaska last year with 50.6 million of stock options, priced at $1.21 per share, RusAl said.Deripaska vowed last April to donate two-thirds of the stock option proceeds to his charity Volnoye Delo and social programs that help bolster local economies.
The option has a two-year lock-up, Deripaska said in an April 20 interview.Vera Kurochkina, head of communications, got the second-largest amount in stock options for a RusAl director, according to the company's statement. The 215,993 shares, worth $262,000, helped Kurochkina be RusAl's fifth-highest earning director in 2010, with a total compensation of $343,000. Kurochkina joined the board in November.
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