Exiting BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers will take a payout of cash, shares and performance rights worth up to $75.2 million at current prices.
Earlier this week Kloppers announced his retirement plans after almost six years in the top job.
He will finish up in May but will remain an employee of the company until October.
The SMH reported that if the exit package is paid it will count as one of the most generous ones in Australian history and puts Kloppers in the league of Macquarie Bank’s former CEO Allan Moss who reportedly received an $80 million package.
Subject to various performance criteria, Kloppers will be eligible for a bonus under BHP's short-term and long-term incentive plans.
It has been reported he will be paid in cash and shares, worth up to 3.2 times his base salary of $US2.215 million, or a maximum of $6.9 million, as well as zero-exercise-price options – to 917,324 BHP shares if the company outperforms a comparator group of major mining companies by 5.5 per cent a year for the next five years.
Assuming BHP meets the performance targets Kloppers will receive the shares progressively from August 2014 to August 2017.
Over his 10 years at the company Kloppers has accumulated almost a million BHP shares.
At the most recent directors’ interest disclosure in December 2012, Kloppers held 628,982 shares in the BHP London-listed company, worth £13.7 million ($20.3 million), and another 373,535 shares in the ASX-listed entity, worth $13.9 million, SMH reported.
BHP shares closed at $37.17 on Thursday, down 4 per cent.