Mark Begor, the chief executive of Equifax, last year was paid $13 million, down from $37.2 million the year before, according to the company’s annual proxy statement.
Begor, 65, has held the top job since April 2018 at the Atlanta-based consumer credit reporting company. He was named CEO in the aftermath of a huge data breach in which financial information about tens of millions of consumers was stolen.
In 2023, Begor received a base salary of $1.5 million, plus about $10.1 million in stocks and options, about $944,000 in cash incentives and about $506,000 in other compensation. Most of the difference between his compensation in 2023 and 2022 was in a reduced amount of stocks and options last year.
Begor spent 35 years at General Electric Co. in a variety of operating and financial roles, including his final position as president and CEO of GE Energy Management. He came to Equifax after two years at Warburg Pincus, a global private equity investment firm, where he had been a managing director.
He was paid $16.1 million in 2021.
In a statement, the company said his compensation, like that of the other top executives, is decided on by a committee taking into account “the ongoing evolution of our business strategy, the compensation of our executives relative to the peer companies we compete with for business and executive talent, the performance of our business, and shareholder feedback.”
Executive pay “aligns with both company performance and shareholder interests,” the Equifax statement said.
The other current executives whose compensation was listed in the proxy were:
- John Gamble Jr., executive vice president, chief financial officer and chief operations officer, was paid $6.1 million.
- Todd Horvath, executive vice president and president of U.S. information solutions, was paid $8.9 million.
- Rodolfo Ploder, executive vice president and president of workforce solutions, was paid $5.1 million.
- Bryson Koehler, who left his position as executive vice president at the start of this month, was paid $4.7 million last year.
U.S. securities regulations now require that companies calculate the ratio between CEO pay and the compensation for the median paycheck of an employee.
The median pay for the roughly 15,000 Equifax employees last year was $69,056, according to the Equifax proxy, making the ratio of Begor’s pay to the median pay 189 to 1.
That is a little more than half the typical ratio, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which calculated the ratio of American CEO pay to the medians employee as 344 to 1. The left-leaning group has criticized the growth of executive pay in recent decades, comparing current ratios to that in 1965 when pay for a top executive was 21 times that of a typical worker.
In recent weeks, other Atlanta-based companies have released proxy statement detailing compensation for their top executives. Among them were Coca-Cola, whose CEO was paid $24.7 million, UPS, whose CEO was paid $23.4 million, and PulteGroup, whose CEO was paid $12.5 million.
TransUnion, another credit reporting company, has not issued its 2024 proxy statement, but in last year’s, the company reported paying Christopher Cartwright, its chief executive and president, $10.5 million.
TransUnion said the media pay for its 12,366 employees was $64,300 and the ratio of CEO to median employee pay was 163 to 1.
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