CEO Pay Watch: Willard Oberton of Fastenal Co. 

CEO Pay Watch: Willard Oberton of Fastenal Co.

Feb 23, 2013 (Star Tribune (Menafn - Minneapolis) - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --CEO Pay Watch Fastenal Co.

Willard Oberton, CEO

Total compensation: 16,292,628 for the year ended Dec. 31

Salary: 490,000

Non-equity incentive pay: 1,556,341

Other compensation: 4,338

Exercised stock options: 14,241,949

New stock options: 125,000

Total return to shareholders 2012: -10.8 percent

Note: Oberton took home 16.3 million in total compensation, mostly from 500,000 stock options granted in previous years that he exercised worth 14.2 million.

Oberton's base salary of 490,000 remained the same, and his annual bonus of 1.6 million was 1.2 million less than last year.

It's the largest annual payout for Oberton since he was named CEO in December 2002. He took home 3.3 million last year and 3.1 million the year before. In the 10 years that Oberton has been CEO, Fastenal stock has had an annualized total return of 18.9 percent, greatly outperforming the S&P 500 index which had an annualized return of 6.6 percent over that period.

Fastenal awarded new stock options for the first time since 2009. The compensation committee granted employees options to purchase 1,235,000 options; 287,500 of those options were granted to named executive officers, including 125,000 to Oberton. All Fastenal employees are eligible to receive options, and since the option program was started in 2003, about 3,000 of Fastenal's more than 15,000 employees have received options.

Patrick Kennedy

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