U.S. Bancorp's CEO made $17.3M last year

U.S. Bancorp CEO Andrew Cecere's compensation decreased 11% last year to $17.3 million, mainly because he exercised fewer stock options.

Here's a breakdown, according to the formula the Star Tribune uses.

Andrew Cecere

Chair, CEO and president

U.S. Bancorp

Note: The Star Tribune executive compensation includes salary bonuses and the value of long-term equity awards when stock options are exercised or restricted stock awards vest. By that method Cecere's compensation declined 11% from the $19.4 million he realized in 2021.

While Cecere's annual salary increased by 8.3% to $1.3 million in 2022 and his annual performance bonus increased 5.5% to $4.8 million, his overall compensation decreased because the value of his long-term equity awards that vested or were exercised declined 18%.

Cecere exercised 10-year options in 2022 that were set to expire that were worth $808,561 when the previous year he exercised options worth $5.1 million. The value of his restricted stock awards that did vest increased 21% to $10.3 million.

While different compensation formulas end up with different totals, the most common ones — including new Securities and Exchange Commission reporting requirements this proxy season — all have Cecere's compensation declining.

The new reporting presents an alternate way to view executive compensation of the CEO and other executive officers listed in the proxy. Among other things, it recalculates the fair value of unvested long-term equity awards at the end of each year for a total compensation figure referred to as compensation actually paid (CAP).

Since U.S. Bank's stock went down in 2022, the value of unvested equity awards also decreased. As a result Cecere's total under CAP decreased 34% from the 2021 total.

Companies are required to provide a CAP number for the previous three years and will eventually be required to make that calculation for the previous five years. The calculations are meant to show the connection between executive compensation and corporate performance.