Equifax CEO Richard Smith Net Worth: He’s “Retired”, But What Was His Salary/Net Worth?
Equifax CEO Richard Smith announced his exit today from the company, after the infamous data breach that happened last week, in which the majority of U.S. adults had their data stolen.
Richard Smith has earned a lot of money from Equifax. So what is his salary? What is Richard Smith net worth? Read on…
Richard Smith background
Richard Smith has had a very successful and lucrative career since he earned is BS degree from Purdue University in 1981 For the last 12 years, Richard Smith has been the Chairman and CEO of Equifax., which is one of the three primary credit monitoring agencies. Prior to that, Richard Smith held several very high level executive positions at General Electric for nearly twenty years.
Additionally, Richard Smith has held numerous coveted advisory positions in industry and civic organizations. Richard Smith has also earned many honors including induction into the Business Hall of Fame at Georgia State University.
During his tenure at Equifax, Richard Smith led the company to great success. Revenue and profits almost tripled and so did the Equifax stock price, until the recent plunge in stock price due the massive data breach. Of course, Richard Smith himself profited tremendously.
Richard Smith net worth
At Equifax, Smith’s 2018 reported compensation was approximately 12 million dollars, roughly half of which came from stock awards and the rest from salary, bonuses and other cash awards. His total reported compensation over his 12 year tenure at Equifax was about 122 million dollars.
However, Richard Smith actually earned a lot more money than that. Public companies use a complicated formula to estimate future value of stock awards which often leads to under-reporting of executive earnings. Analysis of Richard Smith’s stock transactions indicate that Richard Smith earned almost 70 million dollars net profit, just since 2018! Richard Smith net worth is estimated to be in the range of 200-300 million dollars.
