Countrywide Sets Pay Package for Founder Mozilo

CALABASAS, Calif. – Countrywide Financial Corp. reported yesterday that co-founder and current CEO Angelo Mozilo stands to earn as much as $35 million a year by delaying his planned retirement. That includes a $1.9 million base salary, up to $10 million each in bonuses, equity based awards and a one-time restricted stock grant, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If he chooses to retire as CEO, the 68-year-old Mozilo will continue on at a pay of more than $550,000 as chairman of the Countrywide board, one of the highest paid in the country. Members of the Countrywide board were paid as much as $400,000 last year, and the panel includes such well-known figures as Kathleen Brown, former treasurer for the state of California ($276,836); Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ($297,336); Robert Parry, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco ($320,170); and Oscar Robertson, a member of the professional basketball hall of fame ($299,586). Mozilo, who built Countrywide to be the biggest mortgage bank in the world, one of the best paid executives in a publicly owned company, and earned $150 million last year–most of it in options exercised–and could earn as much as $100 million this year.