Top PG&E execs get
HEFTY Bonuses

MICHAEL LIEDTKE / AP 14mar02

SAN FRANCISCO - After Pacific Gas And Electric went bankrupt last year, the utility's parent company rewarded 11 top executives with a total of $5.75 million in cash bonuses and stock grants now worth $24.8 million, according to documents filed Wednesday.

PG&E Corp. paid $2.38 million to CEO Robert D. Glynn Jr., supplementing his $900,000 salary with $1.48 million in cash bonuses.

The San Francisco-based company also gave Glynn the rights to 307,693 shares of company stock worth $6.4 million, based on the shares' closing price of $20.91 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Glynn's salary and bonuses in 2001 more than doubled his 2000 paycheck of $900,000.

Gordon R. Smith, who runs the company's bankrupt utility, also more than doubled his 2000 paycheck of $630,000. PG&E paid Smith $1.5 million last year, including $874,808 in cash bonuses. The company also gave Smith 179,488 shares of stock currently worth $3.75 million as of Wednesday.

All told, PG&E distributed 1.18 million shares of free stock to the 11 top executives listed in the company's shareholder proxy statement.

The executives won't gain full ownership of the stock until 2003 or 2004, the company said.

The lucrative awards paid to PG&E's executives outraged critics who believe the company pushed California's largest utility into bankruptcy by siphoning billions of dollars from the business over several years. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is suing PG&E in a complaint that accuses the company of fraud.

PG&E's executive paychecks are "just off the charts. It's astonishing," said Mike Florio, a senior attorney for The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group fighting to overhaul California's power market.

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