Darren Fishell

Darren Fishell

Business Intelligence Developer

Maine CEO makes 121 times the mid-range employee, according to new disclosures

Written on April 11, 2018

Idexx CEO Jonathan Ayers makes 121 times what the median employee of the Westbrook-based company brings home each year, according to new federal disclosures.

Idexx’s median employee brought home $55,202 in 2017, according to the company’s disclosure. Idexx is the state’s largest public company, by assets.

The pay ratio at Idexx, which makes diagnostic tests for pets and livestock, pales in comparison to some multi-national companies that have disclosed, such as Mattel, where CEO Margo Georgiadis makes 4,987 times the company’s median employee. That’s a new high, according to Bloomberg, which is tracking CEO pay ratio disclosures for some of the country’s largest publicly traded firms.

Public companies are disclosing median pay and the ratio to CEO pay under new rules in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, signed in the wake of the Great Recession.

Idexx is the first of Maine’s major public companies to disclose that ratio, though others are expected as early as this week.

The state’s second-largest public company, WEX, has not yet disclosed. Unum, which has headquarters in Portland and Chattanooga, Tennessee, is due to report its median employee pay sometime this week. The Portland-based ImmuCell also has not filed.

The rest of the Maine-based publicly traded companies are banks, which tend to have lower CEO to employee pay ratios.

Camden National disclosed a pay ratio of 47 to 1 ($43,313 median), Bar Harbor Bankshares disclosed a pay ratio of 26 to 1 ($46,610 median) and the Damariscotta-based The First Bancorp got a little more specific, disclosing a pay ratio of 14.7 to 1 ($45,237 median). The Lewiston-based Northeast Bancorp has not yet disclosed.

A few other national companies with a presence in Maine have also disclosed recently. The CEO of Bath Iron Works parent company General Dynamics, Phebe Novakovic, makes 218 more than the company’s median employee, and the median employee makes $98,563 a year.

The ratio at Texas Instruments, which has a plant in South Portland, was 210 to 1 ($78,951 median).

ON Semiconductor, which purchased Fairchild Semiconductor and its South Portland facility in 2016, Sappi Ltd., the South African firm that owns paper mills in Skowhegan and Westbrook, and Walmart are still yet to disclose.