{"id":517984,"date":"2010-04-06T14:06:06","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T18:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.footnoted.org\/?p=4690"},"modified":"2010-04-06T14:06:06","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T18:06:06","slug":"the-ending-to-mariner-energy%e2%80%99s-cliffhanger%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/517984","title":{"rendered":"The Ending to Mariner Energy\u2019s Cliffhanger\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"library<\/a>Cliffhangers are always fun, although personally we like them better in the context of thrilling new novels than in SEC filings. \u00a0Yet that\u2019s what we discovered when we dug into the proxy<\/a> that Mariner Energy, Inc.<\/a> (ME) filed late last week.<\/p>\n

But first, here’s the set-up\u2026.<\/p>\n

We have to go back to October 27, 2009, when the company filed an 8-K<\/a> to announce that John H. Karnes, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, had left the company the prior week. The press release<\/a> that accompanied the filing explained that Karnes \u201cis leaving the company to pursue other interests.\u201d Scott Josey, Mariner\u2019s Chairman\/President\/CEO, said at the time, \u201cWe thank John for his contributions to Mariner over the past three years and wish him well in his future endeavors.\u201d (The company tapped Jesus Melendrez, its Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, to assume the additional roles of Acting Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.)<\/p>\n

The 8-K also disclosed that Karnes \u201c…will receive severance as provided in his Employment Agreement with Mariner, dated as of October 16, 2006, and restricted stock grants under Mariner\u2019s Stock Incentive Plan, as amended and restated from time to time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, since last October you’ve probably been wondering anxiously, \u201cHow much did our protagonist get when he left Mariner Energy?\u201d \u00a0You may have even researched his October, 2006\u00a0Employment Agreement<\/a> in a frantic search for clues that would enable you to do the math yourself, although there are so many variables that calculating the final number isn’t possible. \u00a0(That’s because there’s no way to know whether Karnes would get raises after 2006, whether he’d get bonuses or RSUs, and so forth.)<\/p>\n

Well, patient readers, wait no longer. The answer to our cliffhanger was finally revealed in last week\u2019s proxy: After three years at Mariner, Karnes left the company with an extra $3,198,152 in severance-related compensation. That\u2019s a surprisingly high number, given the fact that in 2006 Karnes started with a base salary of $235,000. \u00a0By 2009, his base salary was $241,288 (although it had been higher in 2007 and 2008).<\/p>\n

But we know from the Summary Compensation Table’s footnotes that the approximately $3.2 million that Karnes left with consisted of $1,614,600 in\u00a0Severance Pay, $1,553,091 from Accelerated Stock Vesting, and another $30,461 for “Health Benefits Continuation” (that was the company\u2019s share; Karnes had to contribute, as well).<\/p>\n

That works out to nearly $1.07 million in extra compensation for each year that Karnes worked for Mariner Energy. For him – financially, at least – that seems like a pretty good ending.<\/p>\n

Image source:<\/em> Jaap Steinvoorte<\/a> via Flickr<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cliffhangers are always fun, although personally we like them better in the context of thrilling new novels than in SEC filings. \u00a0Yet that\u2019s what we discovered when we dug into the proxy that Mariner Energy, Inc. (ME) filed late last week. But first, here’s the set-up\u2026. We have to go back to October 27, 2009, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4072,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4072"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}