Bradley Gayton (photo source: Coca-Cola Company).
The Coca-Cola Co. announced Wednesday that it is moving legal chief Bradley Gayton to a "strategic consultant" role less than a year after he joined the company
Coca-Cola disclosed the details of Gayton's consulting agreement, which could be worth up to nearly $12 million, in a securities filing Wednesday.
The deal gives Gayton a lump sum "make-whole payment" of $4 million, a waiver of "repayment obligations of certain benefits" related to his initial employment agreement with the company, and a nearly $670,000 monthly consulting fee starting in May 2021 and extending through April 2022.
The payments are contingent on Gayton's "continued compliance with certain restrictive covenants contained in the consulting agreement," the filing said. Gayton received about $4.7 million in total compensation from Coca-Cola last year, according to an annual proxy statement filed by the company March 4. Gayton's pay package included nearly $3.5 million in stock awards, a $576,000 cash bonus, and roughly $253,300 in prorated base salary.
He currently owns over $4 million in Coca-Cola stock and nearly $2.9 million in Ford Motor Co. stock, according to Bloomberg data. Coca-Cola hired Gayton last year from Ford, where he spent almost three decades in-house, the last four of which he served as the top lawyer for the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker.