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. Their customers have lost their homes, and he is potentially walking away with more than $100 million," Ferlauto said. "For us, that's unconscionable enrichment."
In the past, Countrywide has defended Mozilo's pay, saying that shareholders had reaped riches thanks to Mozilo's leadership, a company founder who has served as chief executive since 1998. Until it was struck by rising loan defaults last year, the company had been profitable.
Mozilo also has defended his sale of company stock options, which are now the subject of an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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 past 10 years, Ferlauto said.
Add in potential severance payments and the Calabasas, Calif.-based company would have enriched Mozilo to the tune of three-quarters of $1 billion.
"Compensation abuse has been a recurring travesty with this company," said William Patterson, director of the CtW Investment Group in Washington, which is affiliated with Change to Win, a federation of unions.
Kathy M. Kristof writes for the Los Angeles Times.
