Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson paid $11.4M in 2010

Kin Cheung / AP

Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., speaks during the news conference of the opening ceremony of the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel in Macau Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2007.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson was paid $11.4 million as chief executive of casino developer Las Vegas Sands Corp in 2010, double his 2009 pay thanks to receiving his first cash bonus in three years, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing submitted Friday.

The analysis shows Adelson's pay package included a $1 million salary, $1.8 million in option awards, the $5.7 million performance-based cash bonus and nearly $2.9 million in perks.

The salary, option awards and perks were nearly identical to what he received in 2009.

Adelson had not received a cash bonus since 2007, but in 2010 Sands became the world's largest publicly traded gambling company by revenue. Sands grew by opening a new casino-resort in Singapore, helping its revenues surpass those of MGM Resorts International. The $5.7 million bonus was tied to that growth.

Adelson's perks included $2.5 million in security for the 77-year-old executive and his immediate family, plus $100,000 in reimbursements for professional fees and $194,112 for a car and driver.

Adelson, his wife, Miriam, and their various family trusts own 57.3 percent _ or 436.7 million shares _ of the company's outstanding stock, according to the filing. The company had 728.7 million outstanding shares as of March 31.

Shares of Sands rose 75 cents to $47.01 on Friday, making Adelson's and his family's combined stake worth roughly $20.5 billion.

Over the course of 2010, Sands shares rose from $16.62, on Jan. 4, to $45.95, on Dec. 31.

The Associated Press formula calculates an executive's total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The value that a company assigned to an executive's stock and option awards for 2010 was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company's stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options.

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