TJX chief's pay package valued at $6 million

TJX Cos. chief executive Carol Meyrowitz received compensation valued at nearly $6 million in 2007, her first year in the top job as the off-price retailer's stock price held steady despite fallout from a massive data breach and a tough retail environment.

Meyrowitz received a base minimum salary of $1.4 million after being groomed to replace former interim chief executive and current chairman Bernard Cammarata at the start of TJX's last fiscal year on Jan. 28, 2007.

Meyrowitz, who added the chief executive title to the president's role she's held since 2005, also received $2.3 million in compensation under a non-equity incentive plan, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing yesterday by the Framingham-based operator of nearly 2,600 stores including T.J. Maxx and Marshalls.

Meyrowitz received stock and option awards the company valued at a total $2.2 million on the days they were granted.

She also was given $55,034 in other compensation, covering such items as an automobile benefit, legal fees reimbursement, and financial planning.

Her total compensation of $5.95 million represented a sharp increase from the $952,194 that Cammarata was awarded in 2006 as acting chief executive after temporarily taking the top job following the abrupt 2005 resignation of Edmond English.

Associated Press calculations of total pay include executives' salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation, and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the SEC.

Meyrowitz, 54, took the top job at TJX in a tumultuous year that started with TJX's Jan. 17, 2007 disclosure of a data breach believed to be the largest in U.S. history, based on the number of customer records involved.

TJX said at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards were exposed to possible fraud in a computer systems breach that began in July 2005, but wasn't detected until December 2006.

Court filings by banks that sued TJX put the number of affected cards at more than 100 million, based on estimates by credit card officials deposed in one of several lawsuits TJX faced.

Some of the litigation as well as government investigations have been settled. TJX also responded to the breach by spending millions of dollars to upgrade data security.

TJX's stock dipped as low as $26.10 on the New York Stock Exchange after the breach was disclosed, but closed out 2007 at $28.65, largely unchanged from its $28.90 price at the year's start.

Despite negative publicity from the breach, consumers didn't appear to punish TJX, as sales at stores open at least a year rose 4 percent last year.

While an economic downturn has hurt consumer spending, TJX and other lower-price and discount chains have generally fared well as shoppers increasingly seek bargain prices. TJX's 2007 profit margin was the strongest in six years, excluding data breach costs.

In addition to T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, the 129,000-employee company's stores include HomeGoods, A.J. Wright, Bob's, Winners, HomeSense, and T.K. Maxx. (AP)