Speedway parent CEO makes 935 times as much as his employee median

Enon-based Speedway LLC is part of Findlay-based Marathon.

RELATED: Teradata CEO makes 137 times as much as his employee median 

In its proxy, filed earlier this month with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Marathon sought to put its CEO-employee pay ratio in perspective.

“We expect our ratio of 935:1 may be relatively high when compared to other domestic U.S. refiners,” Marathon said. “This expected difference is largely due to our substantial retail operations (more than 2,700 stores), staffed by approximately 32,000 employees, many of whom are part-time employees.

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“Marathon Petroleum is the only entirely domestic downstream refining company with such a substantial retail presence,” the company said. “As our retail operations rely on a large labor pool of retail employees who work fewer hours and are compensated at lower levels, on a relative basis, than employees working in traditional downstream refining jobs, we would not expect our median employee to be similar in terms of job function or compensation level to the median employee of other domestic U.S. refiners.

“Investors and other stakeholders should take this important difference into account when making comparisons of our CEO pay ratio to those of our peer companies,” the company concluded.

An “independent” pay ratio for Marathon only is very different, the company also said.

The median Marathon employee total annual compensation, excluding Speedway workers, is 156:1, Marathon said.

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Publicly-traded U.S. companies like Marathon are required to pull back the curtain on the pay difference between top executives and their workers. Sometimes those pay differences can be quite stark. AT&T’s workers saw a median salary of $78,437 last year, and Randall Stephenson, that company’s CEO, earned 366 times as much as his employees, the Dallas Morning News recently reported.

The CEO of another Dayton-region company — Teradata’s Victor Lund — makes 137 times as much as his employee median, Teradata’s proxy reveals.

The pay ratio disclosure requirement is one of the transparency measures in the post-financial crisis Dodd-Frank legislation in 2010.

2017 was a good year for both Marathon and Speedway As an operating segment of Marathon, Speedway had income of $732 million.

For Marathon as a whole, 2017 earnings were $3.43 billion, or $6.70 per diluted share, well above the $1.17 billion, or $2.21 per diluted share, for 2016, Marathon said.