Some Colorado executives make the state’s highest-paid list year in and year out, but Greg Maffei, who holds the top spot in 2014, probably won’t make the cut again for a couple more years.
Maffei signed new employment contracts in December. With those agreements came a new round of stock options in Liberty Media, Liberty Interactive, Liberty Broadband and Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, the four companies he runs as CEO and president.
Maffei will receive half of those options four years from now and the other half five years down the road, leaving him somewhat exposed should things fall apart. If future results follow past performance, he stands to make a lot more than the $115.5 million those options were valued at last year.
Matthew Harrigan, managing director at Wunderlich Securities in Denver, said Liberty Media and its various spinoffs have consistently rewarded shareholders, perhaps one reason they haven’t complained about the size of executive pay packages.
“They have done a good job of creating value,” he said.
Harrigan points to Liberty Media’s acquisition of struggling satellite radio provider Sirius XM Holdings for . Liberty recouped its initial investment in under a year, added some to its 40 percent stake, and now has a holding worth about $12 billion.
That’s just one investment. As Maffei has proved his value over the years, the man who hired him, Liberty Media founder John Malone, has consistently boosted his duties and compensation, Harrigan said.
Smoothing out the peaks and valleys of large option awards, Maffei’s reported compensation has averaged $40.1 million a year the past nine years.
It is worth noting that Maffei doesn’t oversee day-to-day operations at the various Liberty holdings, one reason he can juggle four chief executive jobs.
He isn’t deciding what players the Atlanta Braves should draft, what channels Sirius XM should drop or what merchandise QVC should roll out for sale.
Still, Sanjai Bhagat, a finance professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, questions whether that kind of workload could result in divided loyalties and diluted focus.
As talented as Maffei might be, he has the same number of hours in a day as everyone else, Bhagat said.
