Ford Motor Co. awarded $16.7 million in compensation to Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett in his first year in the role as the former office furniture executive attempts a tricky turnaround aimed at reversing a stock slide, reviving profits and preparing the nearly 115-year-old company for the autonomous age.
Hackett, who took the top job in a management shakeup last May, received $1.3 million in salary, $1 million in bonus and $14.4 million in stock and other compensation, Ford said Thursday in a regulatory filing. His total for 2016, when he was running Ford’s nascent mobility business, was not revealed because he was not among the company’s top paid executives at that time.
Hackett, 62, is working to overhaul Ford’s lagging lineup while also spending billions to develop self-driving cars and electric vehicles to prepare for the profound changes expected to upend the auto business in the coming decade. The former Steelcase Inc.CEO is shifting spending away from slow-selling cars to develop new sport-utility vehicles so Ford can reverse market share losses in that hot segment. To pay for those new models and bets on future technology, Hackett has warned that Ford’s profit will fall this year. Investors have traded shares down about 11 percent this year.