The bulk of that compensation stems from a major stock grant handed to Alex Chriss when he took the digital payments company's top post last year
When Chriss was appointed last year, he took over a company that had grappled with profitable growth in recent years under the leadership of Schulman, whose compensation was slashed in the past two years. The significant stock grant for Chriss will presumably provide an incentive to revive the company’s sagging stock price, which is almost one-fifth what it was at its most recent peak in July 2021.
In determining Chriss’s compensation, the board considered his experience, responsibilities, “potential contributions,” and the pay afforded his predecessor, said a PayPal spokesperson. The company also considered competing offers he might receive and compensation at peer companies. In addition, PayPal took into account Chriss’s compensation at his former employer, Intuit, and the equity he forfeited when he left that software company.
“Alex’s total compensation package was determined carefully by the (board’s) Compensation Committee in consultation with its independent compensation consultant,” the spokesperson said by email. He will not receive any equity grant during this year’s reward cycle, the spokesperson noted.
Back in 2020, PayPal benefitted from a U.S. consumer transition to online shopping and commerce during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, raking in revenue when people began purchasing more goods and services from home. But in the past two years, the company has struggled to adapt to a post-pandemic environment with higher inflation and a surge in competition from tech titans, including Apple, and a swarm of new fintech startups.
Chriss faces the twin challenges of pressing forward with expansion of the company’s legacy PayPal button branded services and lifting the profitability of its unbranded businesses, including the Braintree unit. His management team has put a premium on increasing PayPal’s pricing power in the market and building up its small and mid-sized business clientele.
In addition to Miller, Chriss has hired a set of other new top executives to assist him in driving new strategies, including Michelle Gill, who was appointed executive vice president of the company’s small business and financial services group. Gill was awarded a $2 million sign-on bonus, and received half of it last year.
By Lynne Marek on April 10, 2024
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