Workplace pay may be showing some slight signs of life but, for the vast majority of workers, wages have remained pretty flat in recent years.
Many top executives apparently did not get that memo. A sampling of the compensation received by many area CEOs, university presidents and health care officials shows mostly robust pay packages for a majority of top execs in Tampa Bay.
TECO Energy CEO John Ramil, now retired from the Tampa power company, so far tops the pay scale for executives of publicly traded companies as of 2016. His $23.1 million package was a one-time bonanza as it includes money for retirement and for selling TECO, parent of Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas, to Emera, a Canadian energy company.
It's still a whole lotta bread. Jabil CEO Mark Mondello's latest annual compensation, second in size among the executives sampled by the Tampa Bay Times, remains at about $10.5 million in the latest year. That's pretty close to what he received the year before. And while Jerry Fowden, CEO of private label beverage maker Cott Corp., and Raymond James Financial CEO Paul Reilly both earned a bit less than Mondello, their paychecks soared from the previous year. Fowden's compensation doubled while Reilly's rose 25 percent.
Other execs saw 2016 pay drop, typically a reflection of the weaker performance of their companies or the result of an earlier windfall year for pay. At Bloomin' Brands, the parent of such restaurant chains as Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba's, CEO Liz Smith saw her compensation drop 11 percent (she still made millions). At Syniverse, CEO Stephen Gray's $1.65 million looks positively puny after his $18.2 million payout a year earlier at the wireless telecom company.
And neither the paycheck of Tampa International Airport chief Joe Lopano nor that of Port Tampa Bay CEO Paul Anderson seems unduly rich by comparison. Even University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft's compensation of just under $800,000 or newly anointed Publix CEO Todd Jones' $1.9 million appear luxurious by comparison — given the scope and growth of the institutions they run.
So here's a compensation rundown of 25 area business leaders, from public and private companies to universities to non-profit health care businesses.
While most paychecks are listed for the 2016 year, others are based on 2015 compensation and even 2014 in a few cases. Each example is based on the most recently available pay data.
Whether having a banner payday or an off year, most of these 25 still enjoy being in the top 1 percent of income of where they live.
In Pinellas County, it takes just over $1 million in income to make the top 1 percent. In Hillsborough, that number is a little less. And in Pasco, the top 1 percent is achievable with income just under $500,000.
Contact Robert Trigaux at rtrigaux@tampabay.com. Follow @venturetampabay.