Telent's Parton Sees $6M Payout
According to a company filing with the London Stock Exchange, Parton exercised his stock options on Friday and sold 490,000 shares worth £2.38 million ($4.5 million). He has 1,050,000 unvested options remaining.
Telent is the former telecom services arm of Marconi -- the bit that Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) didn't want. (See Ericsson Buys Bulk of Marconi.)
Weekend press reports said Parton still gets more than $800,000 in severance pay for overseeing the sale of the bulk of Marconi to Ericsson, restructuring the company, and securing the pension fund. (See Ericsson/Marconi: The Fallout.)
Parton's total walk-away pay puts the cap on a very profitable executive tenure. After five years at the helms of Marconi and telent, Parton has exercised £10 million worth of stock options.
The sale of Marconi's remains was scuppered last Monday by a shareholder revolt led by hedge fund Polygon, which felt the services and support business was worth more than the £346 million ($660 million) price tag. (See Shareholders Nix Telent Deal.) Parton would have received £3.4 million in bonus stock options had he been able to steer that deal through.
On Friday, Telent announced Parton would step down on October 31. (See Mike Parton to Leave Telent.) He said in the statement: "At the time of the Ericsson announcement, I said that I was committed to ensuring that telent made a strong start as a new company and that the long term future of our UK Pension Fund was secured.
"Now that both these objectives have been achieved and the proposed offer from Holmar has lapsed, I feel this is an opportune time for me to move on."
— Nicole Willing, Reporter, Light Reading