Rob Marcus didn’t want to sell Time Warner Cable when he took over as chief executive in January. Better, he told shareholders, to continue as a standalone company rather than merge with a competitor. But he must be glad that he managed to strike a $45 billion deal with Comcast.
Mr. Marcus will receive nearly $80 million if the deal closes, a severance payment that amounts to more than $1 million a day in compensation for the less than two months he ran the company before agreeing to sell.
Huge golden parachutes are common in big mergers and acquisitions. But the payment to Mr. Marcus, 48, which was disclosed in a regulatory filing on Thursday, is all the more spectacular because he had been chief executive for such a short period.
Should the deal close, Mr. Marcus will receive $56.5 million in stock, $20.5 million in cash and a $2.5 million bonus if Time Warner Cable meets its performance targets by the time of the deal’s completion.
Charter Communications began pursuing Time Warner Cable last year, when Mr. Marcus was the chief operating officer of the company, a role for which he earned $10.1 million in 2012. But in a rapid series of developments in January and February, Mr. Marcus negotiated to sell Time Warner Cable to Comcast, the largest cable operator in the country.
Other Time Warner Cable executives are also in line for big paydays. Arthur T. Minson, Jr., the chief financial officer, will receive severance pay totalling $27 million. Michael LaJoie, the chief technology officer, will receive $16.3 million. And Philip G. Meeks, who replaced Mr. Marcus as chief operating officer, will take home $11.7 million.
Left off the list of golden parachute recipients is Glen Britt, who ran Time Warner Cable after its spin-off from Time Warner in 2009. Mr. Britt stepped down at the end of 2013, partly because of health issues, but not before he told Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, that combining their companies one day would be a “dream deal.â€
That dream is now on the way to becoming reality.
