Darden Restaurants CEO

Gene Lee made $15.7 million in the past year, more than doubling his compensation from 2017 after receiving a $7.5 million stock grant to entice him to stay with the company.

Darden Restaurants CEO Gene Lee made $15.7 million in the past year, more than doubling his compensation from 2017 after receiving a $7.5 million stock grant to entice him to stay with the company through May 2022.

Lee’s compensation package was released Monday as part of the company’s annual proxy report to investors. His deal includes a $1 million base salary, $2 million in bonuses and more than $12.3 million in stock option grants. It also included $430,000 in other compensation, such as a deferred pay plan, a company car, an executive physical, insurance and reimbursements for financial counseling.

“The Committee believed that this grant was an important factor to retaining Mr. Lee as our CEO, because he is retirement eligible, there is competition for executive talent in our industry and he has been critical in managing and growing the Company’s business, including completing the acquisition of Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen in fiscal 2017,” the regulatory filing said.

For the first time this year, Darden also was required to report how much its CEO made compared with the median pay of the companies workers. The median compensation for Darden’s 180,000 U.S. workers is $18,097, including benefits.

Lee makes 871 times that amount, including the $7.5 million bonus. That is the highest ratio of CEO to worker pay for any of Central Florida’s publicly traded companies, greater than ousted SeaWorld leader Joel Manby, who made $8.2 million last year, or 740 times the amount of SeaWorld’s median employee

Lee’s big compensation boost comes as Darden’s stock has hit records highs on Wall Street, trading over $111 a share and boosting the company’s market value to $13.7 billion. That’s more than twice what it was worth when Lee took over as CEO in September 2014.

Darden turned in a $596 million profit for its 2018 fiscal year that ended May, the company’s biggest operating profit ever.

Most of Lee’s stock awards were part of a $7.5 million “Special Grant to CEO” the firm’s board gave to Lee, but he won’t collect on it until 2020. However, because of SEC rules, the grant had to be included in his 2018 fiscal year compensation total.

Lee, 57, has been with Darden Restaurants since 2007, when it bought Rare Hospitality, the parent company of Capital Grille and LongHorn Steakhouse. He took over on an interim basis for former CEO Clarence Otis during a hostile battle with investor activists in 2014 and was given the job outright a few months later.

Since then, Darden has stabilized sales at its flagship Olive Garden brand and spent $780 million to buy value-oriented chain Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, which has struggled since the acquisition.

While Lee’s total compensation went up last year, the total compensation of some of the company’s second-highest-paid employee, chief operating officer and former Olive Garden president Dave George, fell 20 percent to $3.1 million. However, George’s base pay increased by $70,000 to $695,673.

Chief financial officer Ricardo Cardenas made $2.78 million, a 9 percent rise in total compensation. LongHorn president Todd Burrowes made $2.27 million, a 27 percent rise over the previous year.