March 29, 2006

For the past few years, directors have been complaining loudly that their workload has increased dramatically in the wake of SOX. Some have even resigned, saying the amount of time they spend doing board work, combined with the added legal exposure just doesn’t make financial sense. But the fact remains that for just about every director, this is still a part-time job, at least judging by the number of directors who sit on multiple boards and the number who hold other full-time jobs.

So you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon Remington Oil and Gas’ (REM) amended K filed yesterday. In the new director compensation table — another change scheduled to be put in place by the SEC next year, but not yet required so we’ll give Remington a gold star for being ahead of the curve — we learn that five of Remington’s six directors made over $600K last year for their part-time jobs. To be fair, the bulk of that came from the $558K worth of restricted stock given to each director. But that’s still a lot of money, particularly if you compare it to a similar disclosure in Intel’s (INTC) proxy which was also filed yesterday. Like Remington, Intel also provides disclosure on total director compensation. But 8 of Intel’s 9 directors made under $200K for their part-time jobs, with only lead director David Yoffie, making over $200K. Now compare Intel’s market cap to Remington’s: roughly 100 times larger.

As more companies begin to provide this information, it will be interesting to see just how much other directors are making for their part-time jobs.