ADP Proxy Reveals Some Bad Executive Habits

Michelle Leder reported on Footnoted.org: It seems as if ADP (ADP) Group President S. Michael Martone has developed a habit for using the corporate jet, judging by the proxy the company filed yesterday, which notes that Martone spent $257K on his personal use of the corporate jet in 2006, or nearly half of his salary of $542K.

That’s not the only perk that Martone received last year: there was also $44K for a country club membership and a $30K tax gross up to cover the cost of that membership and another $24K plus a $19K gross-up to cover moving expenses. Indeed, all of the perks taken together add up to $384K, or nearly as much as Martone’s $412K bonus. Oddly enough, other ADP executives don’t seem to have a similar habit. Indeed, Martone is the only senior executive listed as using the corporate jet for his personal use.

Also odd, or perhaps just annoying, is that ADP requires investors to flip back to earlier proxies to figure out how that spending compares to previous years. Though it lists a number for "other annual compensation" and it’s easy enough to see that in 2005, Martone received $211K as opposed to the $384K in 2006, there’s no descriptive break-down for the earlier numbers.

Flipping back to the 2005 proxy, we see that Martone only spent $169K on personal use of the corporate jet in 2005, which means his use of the corporate jet increased by over 50% in 2006. Too bad we can’t say the same thing about ADP’s stock, which judging by the chart that the company included in the proxy, has underperformed both its peer group and the S&P 500.