Western Union Delivers to First Data Executives

DENVER – Top executives at both First Data and Western Union pretty much doubled their money with last October’s spin-off of the world’s largest money transmitter. While executives and other shareholders of First Data received Western Union shares in the spin-off, First Data agreed to issue one option for Western Union shares for every option of First Data share–reaping tens of millions in additional compensation for top executives, according to both companies’ annual proxy statements. And while the exercise price for Western Union options was set at $19.13, the company issued millions of options to long-term executives for as little $6.09. Michael Whealy, First Data’s general counsel who had been with the company since 1992, was granted 40,000 options at $6.09, and almost one million options to be exercised at various prices up to $18.25, worth millions of dollars at Monday’s closing price of $21.55. First Data CEO Henry ‘Ric’ Duques also received more than one million Western Union options, as did Ed Labry, head of commercial services. As a result of the spin-off, the executives also hold an equivalent number of First Data options, valued at tens of millions of dollars as a result of the agreement to sell the company to private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for $34 a share. Duques, who earned $96.2 million last year on his First Data options, still holds more than one million First Data options worth more than $20 million.