Textron CEO Scott Donnelly is the second highest paid corporate executive in Rhode Island on a list produced by the Associated Press this week. Donnelly is paid $12.2 million, according to the AP, in “salary, bonus, perks, stock awards, stock option awards, deferred compensation and other pay components that include benefits and perks.”
Larry Merlo, of CVS, was the top paid CEO on the new AP list with $22.9 million in compensation. Brian Goldner, of Hasbro, is the third highest paid CEO on the list with $10.3 million in compensation and Bruce Van Saun, of Citizens Financial Group, was fourth with $8 million in compensation. Of the four CEOs from RI, only Donnelly increased his earnings from the previous year, the other three all took pay cuts.
In 2012, Donnelly was the third best paid CEO in Rhode Island. Goldner of Hasbro was the highest paid and Merlo was second. While Donnelly is the second highest paid CEO in Rhode Island on the new list, he would be the best paid chief executive in 20 states, according to a list published by the Providence Journal.
Donnelly started with Textron in 2008 as the chief operating officer. He was previously the chief executive officer at GE Aviation. In 2009, he “was promoted to president and chief operating officer,” according to Textron’s website. “He became CEO in December 2009 and was elected chairman of the board effective September 1, 2010.”
Donnelly is also a member of the Bryant University Board of Trustees. He is on the board of directors for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and Medtronic, a medical device company based in Ireland. He attended college at the University of Colorado, Boulder and studied engineering.
Textron, a global defense and aviation conglomerate based in Providence, has been cited recently by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the New York Times and Los Angles Times, among others, for making cluster bombs the United States sells to Saudi Arabia. Humanitarian groups say Saudi Arabia has used Textron’s cluster bombs in civilian-populated areas of Yemen, a violation of US law. Cluster bombs, the rights groups say, have killed and injured dozens of innocent civilians during the past year as Saudi Arabia has been mired in a conflict with Yemen.
Cluster bombs are outlawed by 119 nations and the United Nations, but not by the US or Saudi Arabia. Textron is the last cluster bomb manufacturer in North America. Humanitarian groups and peace activists are calling on Textron to stop making cluster bombs. Local activists led by the FANG Collective and the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, are holding weekly protests in front of Textron’s downtown Providence “world headquarters” to call attention to the company’s cluster bombs.
Textron also makes Cessna airplanes, Bell helicopters, golf carts and power tools. Credited as the first conglomerate, Textron employs 300 people in Rhode Island and 34,000 across the planet.
Read RI Future’s full coverage of Textron’s cluster bombs here:
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