For the past few years, pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough (SGP) has disclosed that it provides personal security for its Chairman and CEO Fred Hassan. In 2006, the company spent $134K on this, down from the $156K spent in 2005. But this year’s proxy, which was filed late Friday, provided a bit more detail, including that the company pays for bodyguards for Hassan because “the named executives in 2006, and prior years, have received threats of personal harm from animal rights activists and others based upon Schering-Plough’s business”.

But the new disclosure seems a bit odd, because the company seems to have come to terms with one of the largest animal-rights groups, PETA, several years ago — at least judging by this page that summarizes PETA’s concerns with SGP. It’s not clear what has happened since then, however.

Equally interesting in SGP’s proxy was the hefty payments top executives would receive following a change-in-control. Hassan would receive close to $60 million, which includes a $20.8 million gross-up. Security costs, however, weren’t included in the breakdown.

This entry was posted Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 7:13 am written by Michelle Leder and is filed under Perk city . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.