San Juan mortgage exec earned more than banking's biggies.

Move over, Angelo Mozilo.

Eat your heart out, John Reed.

There is a mortgage chieftain who earns more than Mr. Mozilo - the flashy vice chairman of Countrywide Credit Industries - and more than Mr. Reed, the chairman of Citicorp.

He is Salomon Levis, chairman of First Financial Caribbean Corp., a Puerto Rico-based mortgage bank.

As Mr. Mozilo was leading his firm to mortgage-industry dominance last year, Mr. Levis was quietly raking in $7.9 million in salary and bonus.

Good Timing

That was more than twice as much as the $3 million Mr. Mozilo pulled down. And it handily topped the $4.2 million haul of Mr. Reed, the nation's highest paid commercial banking executive.

Mr. Levis, who founded First Financial Caribbean, didn't want for much in 1992 either, when he made more than $5.1 million.

How did Mr. Levis do it? He negotiated a compensation package that was heavily weighted towards volume - just before falling interest rates set off the greatest wave of mortgage refinancings in history.

The contract awarded Mr. Levis 0.375% of the face value of all home loans his company made in excess of $200 million.

Also, he received 0.1875% of the face value of all construction loans made in excess of $90 million.

All told, the company produced some $1.4 billion of residential loans in 1993.

Mr. Levis got a quarter of all profits the company earned above a return on equity of 15%.

All of the above was in addition to his $1 million salary.

Those items added up to the $7.9 million, a figure Mr. Levis is not likely to hit again. In the future, his compensation will have a stronger stock option component.

"The company and directors are thinking about changing to a performance bonus based on the worth of the company going forward," said Richard Bonini, senior executive vice president of First Financial Caribbean.

He stressed that Mr. Levis rounded the company and has overseen strong growth in the value of its stock. In the five years ending last December, First Financial said, its stock returned approximately 50% more than a broad index of financial company stocks.

As of Thursday, the company had a market capitalization of about $76.5 million. That makes Mr. Levis' 1993 compensation about 10% of the company's current market value.

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