LPL Financial recently awarded senior management over 35,000 shares of common stock, according to notices filed with the Securities Exchange Commission Tuesday night.
Senior executives, including chief risk officer Michelle Oroschakoff and chief information officer Victor Fetter, as well as newly appointed president Dan Arnold, also received vested stock options worth $45.55 a share that become exercisable as early as next March. Shares of LPL Financial closed on Tuesday at $45.15 a share.
A spokesman for LPL, Brett Weinberg, said Tuesday’s options were new awards given as part of the executives’ compensation, specifically, long-term incentive grants.
CEO Mark Casady did not receive any common stock, but was awarded 40,000 options that become exercisable in three equal annual starting March 6, 2016 and going through until 2018.
Casady, 53, reached an agreement in June 2010, amid the company’s IPO, to extend his employment contract for five years. But LPL terminated that contract, as well as employment agreements for Arnold and former president Robert Moore last February in an effort to "more closely with market practices" and eliminate compensation discrepancies with other executives. Since then, Casady has not been under contract.
But that may change in light of Moore’s recent departure, as well as several other high-profile executives leaving the firm over the past year. A source familiar with the matter said LPL’s Board of Directors considering offering Casady a 3-year contract deal.
When asked to confirm, Weinberg declined, calling it “speculative” and saying the firm would not comment. But at a firm event on Tuesday, Casady told advisors he had no intention of leaving and was “going to be around for many years to come,” an advisor attending said.
