Money manager Gabelli rakes in $46M pay

The executive may rank as highest paid chief on Wall Street, even after taking a 34% cut from the lofty $70 million pay package he took home in 2007. The title of best-paid chief executive on Wall Street may belong to Mario Gabelli, a money manager who took home $46 million in compensation last year. Mr. Gabelli is founder of Gamco Investors Inc., which manages $20 billion of assets for mutual fund customers and institutional investors. Last year was a challenging one for the firm, as was the case for most financial-services outfits. Assets under management declined by 33% firm-wide as global stock markets sank. Gamco’s stock price fell by 60% as net income slipped by 69%, to $25 million, due to heavy investment losses. Revenue fell by 16% to $247 million. The flagship Gabelli Asset Fund, whose top investments include media concerns such as Cablevision and News Corp., fell by 37% last year, according to fund tracker Morningstar, although that was a slightly better performance than its peer group. Mr. Gabelli, who started his Rye, N.Y.-based firm in 1977 and controls shares that give him about 95% voting power in board matters, awarded himself pay last year that amounted to less than 20% of Gamco’s total revenue. Most of his compensation is based on an agreement that reserves him a healthy cut of the firm’s revenue, but he also collected a $2.4 million “incentive fee,” according to a regulatory filing. He takes no salary, bonus, or stock awards. The second-best-paid Gamco executive, its president, was awarded $3.8 million. Vast as Mr. Gabelli’s pay was last year, it was substantially less that 2007’s take of $70 million. In 2007, his compensation was dwarfed by Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman and roughly equal to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein. Last year, Messrs. Schwarzman and Blankfein earned $350,000 and $1.1 million respectively.