Las Vegas casino operator MGM Resorts International paid its head honcho 25.1 percent more in 2016 after the company beat its earnings target.
James Murren, chairman and chief executive of the casino group, received a total of $16.6 million last year, up from the $13.3 million he received in 2015, MGM Resorts reported in a proxy filing 
to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
For 2016, MGM Resorts set a target of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $2.14 billion. Actual EBITDA came in 8 percent higher, triggering a bonus that was 41.3 percent higher than planned, according to the company.
Murren’s 2016 base salary was kept at the 2015 level of $2 million, but the MGM Resorts chief stock awards—consisting of restricted stock and performance-linked shares—rose 19 percent year-on-year to reach $7.44 million. Murren also received $1.52 million in “other compensation,” including $250,000 for personal use of aircraft and $391,814 for personal security services.
MGM Resorts said the cost of Murren’s personal security services was “within a competitive range based on cost of such services for the chief executive officers of the three other major Las Vegas based gaming/resort companies (Las Vegas Sands [Corp], Wynn Resorts [Ltd], and Caesars Entertainment [Corp]).”
Murren has been chairman and CEO since December 2008. In October, he signed a new, five-year contract with MGM that grants him, among other things, $2 million of restricted stock units that he will gain when the contract terminates at the end of 2021. The signing bonus was not part of the $16.6 million in compensation, according to the casino company.
Murren has been at the helm of MGM’s Resorts’ expansion in Asia. The casino group, which has a 56 percent stake in Macau’s MGM China Holdings Ltd., recently expressed a willingness to invest up to $10 billion to open an integrated resort in Japan.
The second-highest pay package in MGM Resorts went to Robert Baldwin, the group’s chief customer development officer. Baldwin’s package reached over $7.02 million, up 7 percent from the approximately $6.56 million he received in 2015.
