Lynch took $600,000 salary last year
Sunday, May 18, 2003 9:29 AM PDT
By Pat Forgey
Printable version
E-mail this articleLast year, while Longview Aluminum was heading towards bankruptcy, owner Michael Lynch paid himself more than $600,000 in salary, fees and business expenses.
His business expenses alone totaled $180,000.
Longview Aluminum attorneys outlined the compensation Lynch and other company officials received last year in papers filed recently in federal bankruptcy court.
In a February interview with The Daily News, Lynch had called his salary "a pittance" for a $400 million company, but he refused to specify the amount.
According to the court papers, Lynch received a $330,000 salary in 2002. By comparison, Lynch's salary was more than the $252,000 Longview Fibre Co. President R.P. "Rick" Wollenberg received last year, but less than the $416,000 paid to Fibre Chairman and former president R.H. "Dick" Wollenberg. Fibre had sales of $769 million last year.
The bankruptcy filings also reported the ownership structure of Longview Aluminum.
Lynch, its chairman, owns 56 percent of the company, according to the bankruptcy papers. Other owners include John Kolleng, vice-chairman, 22 percent; Matt Ochalski, 16 percent; and McCall Enterprises, 6 percent. Kolleng's salary was $210,000, and Ochalski's was $120,000 in 2002.
Lynch and his partners received other compensation as well, including investment banking fees, payment of business expenses and payments of legal fees.
Lynch and his partners paid themselves investment banking fees in connection with the sale of the smelter from Alcoa Inc. to his company in 2001. The documents don't list how much investment banking fee, if any, was paid in 2001, but all the partners received such payments in 2002. Lynch and Kolleng each received $100,000, and Ochalski received $40,000.
Longview Aluminum hasn't produced aluminum since buying the plant, but the company did receive a $226 million payment from the Bonneville Power Administration during the West Coast power crisis to shut down and stop using power.
Longview Aluminum also paid significant amounts in expenses for Lynch and his partners during the year. Longview Aluminum reimbursed Lynch for $180,000 in business expenses, and reimbursed Kolleng for $65,000. The bankruptcy papers do not specify what the expenses were for.
The bankruptcy filings also tallied legal expenses paid by Longview Aluminum on behalf of the partners, some of which had already been listed elsewhere. Lynch had bills worth $535,000, Kolleng, $93,000, and Ochalski and McCall Enterprises, $41,000 each.
Total payments to the partners in 2002 was $1.8 million.
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