Home Depot CEO Nardelli quits

updated 4:52 p.m. ET Jan. 3, 2007

ATLANTA - Bob Nardelli said he had no intention of stepping down. His board said it didn’t want anybody else. But in the end, analysts said, the criticism over Nardelli’s hefty pay and The Home Depot Inc.’s poor stock performance forced a change of heart.

Nardelli abruptly resigned as chairman and chief executive of the world’s largest home improvement store chain after six years at the helm, the company said Wednesday.

He didn’t leave empty-handed: the Atlanta-based company said Nardelli would receive a severance package worth roughly $210 million, an amount decried by some lawmakers as a golden parachute that sends the wrong message to investors.

“It’s a sign of being totally out of touch,” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “They don’t understand the extent to which they make the American public angry.”

Frank said he would push for legislation requiring public companies to allow shareholders to have a say in compensation and severance for senior executives. At Home Depot’s annual meeting last May, shareholder proposals to give investors a say on the CEO’s pay and to restrict retirement benefits for senior executives were rejected.

Nardelli’s severance package includes a cash payment of $20 million and the acceleration of unvested deferred stock awards currently valued at roughly $77 million. A Home Depot spokesman said the timing of the resignation, which was effective Tuesday, had no bearing on the amount in the package.

The total package is seven times the $30 million Home Depot set aside last June for stores and employees that provide good customer service. Home Depot has 2,127 stores and 355,000 employees in the United States, Canada, Mexico and China.

Home Depot said Nardelli was being replaced by Frank Blake, its vice chairman, effective immediately.

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who had a hand in hiring Nardelli, said he supports the board’s decision to replace Nardelli with Blake.

“My concern is what happens in the future, and I feel very good about it,” said Marcus, who no longer works for Home Depot in any official capacity but remains one of the company’s largest individual shareholders.

Asked about the severance payout, Marcus said the amount won’t be that big a deal in the long-run if the company’s stock price improves.

“It’s like the old story, if the stock goes up 10 points, who’s going to care?” Marcus said.

Nardelli, a former college football player, became CEO of Home Depot in December 2000 after being passed over for the top job at General Electric Co., where Nardelli had been a senior executive.

Blake’s appointment is permanent, Home Depot spokesman Jerry Shields said. The company declined to make Blake available for comment, and messages left for Nardelli with his secretary and on his wife’s cell phone were not immediately returned.

Home Depot shares rose 91 cents, or 2.3 percent, to close at $41.07 on the New York Stock Exchange, near the upper end of their 52-week range of $32.85 to $43.95. Before Wednesday’s news, Home Depot’s stock had been down more than 3 percent on a split-adjusted basis since Nardelli took over.

Nardelli’s sudden departure was stunning in that he told The Associated Press as recently as Sept. 1 that he had no intention of leaving, and a key director said that the board was pleased with Nardelli despite the uproar by some investors. That director, Bonnie Hill, did not immediately return messages left Wednesday for her at her office in Los Angeles.

Asked in the earlier AP interview if he had thought of hanging up his orange apron and leaving Home Depot, Nardelli said unequivocally that he hadn’t. Asked what he thought he would be doing 10 years from now, Nardelli said, “Selling hammers.”

For The Home Depot?

“Absolutely,” he said at the time.

Marcus said he had no idea Nardelli’s resignation was coming.

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