Exxon Mobil and Rex Tillerson have agreed to cut all ties as part of conflict-of-interest requirements while the former Exxon CEO and chairman is awaiting a confirmation process as U.S. Secretary of State, the oil major said on Tuesday.
Tillerson, whom President-elect Donald Trump picked to nominate as Secretary of State in mid-December, is facing a tough process of confirmation because both Democratic and Republican legislators have expressed worries that his appointment would further warm relations between the U.S. and Russia. As chief executive at Exxon, Tillerson had close ties with Russia and helped the U.S. major forge oil deals with and in Russia.
A day after Trump's team said the president-elect would nominate Tillerson for Secretary of State, Exxon said that Tillerson intended to retire from the oil giant.
Now, under the agreement to sever all ties, should Tillerson be confirmed as Secretary of State, "the value of more than 2 million deferred ExxonMobil shares that he would have received over the next 10 years would be transferred to an independently managed trust and the ExxonMobil share awards would be cancelled," the company said.
The trust would not be allowed to invest in Exxon, and payments to Tillerson from that trust would be subject to the same 10-year schedule that the cancelled awards would have had if they had continued in place, Exxon added.
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Tillerson is also giving up entitlement to more than US$4.1 million in cash bonuses over the next three years, and other benefits.
Apart from the agreement with Exxon, Tillerson committed to the State Department that he would also sell the more than 600,000 shares he holds in the company at present.
If confirmed as Secretary of State, Tillerson would take a huge 'pay cut', CNN says. Since 2006, as chief executive at Exxon, Tillerson has received more than US$240 million, including US$24.3 million he made last year alone. As Secretary of State, he would earn US$203,700 a year.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More