Finally, Mozilo would be eligible for accelerated payment of stock options and stock grants if the buyout goes through. Those are worth at least $3 million at current market prices, estimated Richard Ferlauto, director of pension and benefits policy at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Add it all up, and the severance package is potentially worth $115 million.
"He has driven the stock price into the ground and the company has been destroyed," Ferlauto said. "Their customers have lost their homes and he is potentially walking away with more than $100 million. For us, that's unconscionable enrichment."
In the past, Countrywide has defended Mozilo's pay, saying that shareholders had reaped vast riches thanks to the leadership of the company's founder, who has served as its chief executive since 1998. Until it was struck by rising loan defaults last year, the company had been profitable and its stock price had handily beaten market averages.
Mozilo has also defended his sale of company stock options, which are now the subject of an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Times reported last year that Mozilo made changes to his stock-trading arrangements that allowed him to ramp up his sales of company stock before Countrywide shares went into a tailspin.
In October 2006, shortly before the severity of the mortgage crisis became understood to investors, Mozilo adopted a stock-trading plan allowing him to sell 350,000 shares of Countrywide stock each month.
He launched a second trading plan in December 2006 and then revised it in February, when the stock was at a 52-week high, to vastly increase his stock sales. Those changes helped enable Mozilo to sell $145 million in Countrywide stock between Nov. 1, 2006, and Oct. 12, 2007. Although executives are allowed to trade shares in their companies under so-called 10b(5) agreements, industry experts said it was highly unusual to revise and add plans in short succession.
SEC officials will not discuss continuing investigations, but people within the agency have confirmed that Mozilo's stock sales are being scrutinized.
Combining those sales with pay and previous gains on the sale of stock, Mozilo has taken more than $650 million out of Countrywide over the course of the last 10 years, Ferlauto said. Add in potential severance payments and the Calabasas-based company would have enriched Mozilo to the tune of three-quarters of a billion dollars.
"Compensation abuse has been a recurring travesty with this company," said William Patterson, director of CtW Investment Group in Washington. "The company has been run into the mud. Should Mozilo be able to walk away with this additional cash? Clearly not. I think it becomes the latest in a series of outrages."
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kathy.kristof@latimes.com
