Compensation for top execs at 6 public companies: $74m

Total earnings up 1.5 percent from 2012

It’s proxy season, the time when shareholders get to see how much the top executives of public companies have earned in the previous year.

In New Hampshire, the executives of six Granite State-related companies earned a total of about $74.4 million in stock and cash, some 1.5 percent more than they made the year before.

No CEO earned less than $1 million. The highest paid executive of the lot, Eric Wiseman – president and CEO of VF Corp., which in 2011 acquired Stratham-based Timberland – was awarded $11.8 million in compensation, though that’s a 17 percent pay cut.

The next highest paid, Raymond Barrette, chair and CEO of White Mountains Insurance Group, got the biggest pay hike. Barrette, who works out of Hanover, received $8 million in compensation – more than five times the amount he earned in 2012, when he made $1.3 million.

The 49 board members who approved this compensation didn’t do so poorly themselves: a total of $9.7 million in stock and cash.

Here is a breakdown by company:

 • VF Corp. paid its top five executives a total $29.4 million, up 7.7 percent, despite Wiseman's pay cut. After Wiseman, Karl Salzburger, vice president and group president of VF International, earned $5.6 million, 63 percent more than last year. VF made $11.4 billion in 2013, up 5 percent, with a net profit of $1.2 billion, up 11 percent.

 • White Mountains Insurance paid its top five executives a total of some $27.7 million, a 28 percent increase. After Barrette, Allan Waters, president and CEO of the Sirius Group subsidiary, was paid $6.5 million, an 18 percent increase. White Mountains’ net income was $321.8 million, a 55 percent increase over 2012.

 • Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc., based in Connecticut but whose largest manufacturing facility is in New Hampshire, paid its five top executives a total of $6.7 million, or a 22 percent decrease. That’s primarily due to CEO Michael Fifer’s salary – $2.5 million, a 45 percent pay cut. The other executives’ compensation rose slightly. Ruger had revenue of $688 million, up 40 percent. And despite spending some $55 million, mostly for a new plant in North Carolina, the company posted a net income of $111 million, a 55 percent increase.

 • The top five executives at FairPoint Communications, based in Charlotte, N.C., were paid a total of $4.8 million, an 18 percent increase, with CEO Paul Sunu earning $1.95 million, a 17 percent increase. Chief financial officer Ajay Sabherwal was the runner up with $750,000. FairPoint sales fell 9.5 percent, to $939 million, in 2013. It posted a net loss of $93 million.

 • Unitil Corp., based in Hampton, paid its top five executives a total of $3.5 million, a 19 percent decline, just slightly below the 19.5 percent pay cut of Robert G. Schoenberger, CEO, president and chairman, who earned $1.7 million. The company itself earned $21.6 million, a 3.5 percent increase over last year.

 • Three executives at Nashua-based iCAD Inc. were paid a total of $2.3 million. CEO Kenneth Ferry took in $1 million of that compensation, some 11.5 percent more than he earned in 2012. The company’s revenue of $28.7 million was relatively flat in the previous year, and it lost 7.6 million.