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March 24, 2021 at 05:08 PM
What You Need to Know
- CEO Dan Arnold's base salary remained the same in 2020, but he didn’t get option awards as he did in 2019.
- The firm's net income for 2020 was down 16% from 2019.
- LPL's advisor count grew to 17,287 in 2020 and has continued to grow in 2021.
LPL Financial cut the total compensation of CEO and President Dan Arnold in 2020 to $7.3 million from $7.7 million in 2019, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
Arnold’s base salary was unchanged at $850,000, LPL said in the filing. However, his salary came in at slightly less than that for 2019, at $842,308, because he received a base salary increase from $800,000 to $850,000 on Feb. 17, 2019.
Arnold did not receive option awards in 2020. In 2019, he earned option awards of $1.7 million, up from $1.5 million in 2018.
In 2020, Arnold also received $4.2 million in stock awards, up from $2.6 million in 2019; non-equity incentive plan compensation of $2.2 million, down from $2.5 million in 2019; and other compensation of $36,170, down from $44,630.
Meanwhile, the base salary of Matthew Audette, LPL’s chief financial officer, remained $600,000 last year, but his total compensation decreased to $2.8 million from $3.3 million.
The base salaries of Scott Seese, chief information officer and managing director, and Dayton Semerjian, chief customer care officer and managing director, each remained $500,000.
But Seese’s total compensation decreased to $2.4 million from $2.8 million, while Semerjian’s total compensation decreased to $2.3 million from $2.4 million.
The only LPL executive whose base salary increased last year was Richard Steinmeier, divisional president and managing director, to $500,000 from $450,000. His total 2020 compensation increased to $2.4 million from $2.2 million.
In determining the salaries of Arnold, Audette, Seese and Semerjian, the LPL Compensation Committee “considered, among other things, the competitiveness and mix of each executive’s total compensation opportunity based on benchmarking data prepared by the Compensation Consultant,” the company said in the filing.
That data included compensation data for “comparable roles at relevant peer companies and other survey data,” it noted.
In increasing Steinmeier’s base salary, the Compensation Committee “considered his role, the scope of which had expanded to include responsibility for corporate strategy, his individual performance and his enterprise-wide contribution to” LPL’s performance, as well as benchmarking data and internal equity considerations, it said.
