BB&T cuts compensation for top executives

BB&T Corp.’s top executives saw their compensation fall for their performance last year, as they fell short of targets, the Winston-Salem lender disclosed in a securities filing late Monday.

CEO Kelly King’s compensation for his work in 2014 fell 8.2 percent from the year before, to $7.2 million. Other top executives also saw their pay drop.

According to the filing, the company’s 2014 earnings per share of $2.90 fell below a target of $3. BB&T’s performance for return on common equity, a metric that shows how efficient a company is at generating profits with money shareholders have invested, fell below a level to trigger a maximum incentive payout.

Failure to perform better on both metrics resulted in smaller cash bonuses to the company’s top executives than a year earlier.

Also, BB&T said it again lowered the maximum cash bonuses payable to top executives based on feedback from regulators, in order to discourage executives from risky behavior designed to achieve maximum payout levels. For cash bonuses, the bank reduced the maximum payout to 125 percent of executives’ base salary from 150 percent a year earlier.

The company made profit of $2.2 billion last year, up 29 percent from a year earlier.

BB&T declined to comment Monday beyond what was in the securities filing.

BB&T is the third-largest lender by deposits in the Charlotte metro area, behind No. 1 Bank of America and No. 2 Wells Fargo.

This story was originally published March 16, 2015 at 7:08 PM with the headline "BB&T cuts compensation for top executives."