New report shows former Enmax CEO made $3.8M last year

The former president and CEO of Calgary-based Enmax was paid close to $4 million last year. 

Wayne O'Connor left the city-owned utility last October after joining in the summer of 2020. In a report released Tuesday, Enmax detailed its 2021 compensation figures for its top officials. 

The report shows O'Connor was paid $3.8 million, a figure that includes close to $2.4 million in salary and bonuses during the 10 months in 2021 he served as president, and an additional nearly $1.4 million in other compensation — which reflects perquisite amounts for items including severance.  

Greg Melchin, chair of the Enmax board of directors, says O'Connor and the organization came to a "mutually agreed departure." 

"We're really pleased with the work that Wayne did in that respect, captures the difficult times.… We had all the COVID kind of issues you had to deal with, the whole transformation of an organization."

"But when we saw — I think both of our interest going forward — we decided that we'd make a change but still compliment Wayne on some very good achievements." 

Melchin says there isn't anything unusual about this level of compensation for a CEO. 

"You try to attract the best talent for the organization. So you have to make sure you provide a package that would be competitive with what would be out there for a CEO," he said. 

"His compensation structure has been publicly available, his contract publicly available. And so we've made that information available. And the severance terms are very standard for what he would be as a CEO for having left the organization." 

O'Connor started at Enmax in June 2020 and left in October the following year. 

Mayor Jyoti Gondek said she had no comment on O'Connor's compensation.

Enmax announced last week that Mark Poweska would be its new top executive. He starts in September.