Tenet Healthcare hands Jeb Bush a big windfall

BY JOHN DORSCHNER
Miami Herald

Shareholders officially elected former Gov. Jeb Bush to the board of Tenet Healthcare on Thursday -- a part-time job that will bring him over $450,000 in the next year.

At the hospital chain's annual shareholder meeting in Dallas, Bush received 96.56 percent of the shares voting, with 3.44 percent withheld, for a one-year post. Only one of the 10 directors elected had a higher vote.

For this, Bush has already received 34,667 shares worth $260,000, which he has registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He will receive a $65,000 annual retainer fee, plus $1,500 per board meeting and $1,200 per committee meeting attended. And finally, he will get $130,000 annually in stock for each year he's on the board.

That doesn't make him a special case at Tenet, however, because SEC filings show the company's board members earned between $409,000 and $590,000 for 2006.

Those numbers are way above the directors' compensation for the Standard & Poor's 500 companies, which paid an average of $120,000 for retainer and equity in 2006, according to Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate with The Corporate Library, a Portland, Me., group offering independent compensation analysis.

Directors' compensation has been going up rapidly -- about 20 percent a year for the past two or three years, said Hodgson, meaning 2007 pay for S&P 500 directors might average about $140,000.

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