Discover CEO’s pay totaled $21.8 million

The chief executive of Discover Financial Services LLC received compensation valued at $21.8 million in fiscal 2007, the year the credit card lender became a publicly traded company, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday.

Discover spun off from investment bank Morgan Stanley last summer, just a few weeks before soaring mortgage defaults and tightening in the credit markets began slamming the financial sector.

David W. Nelms has been CEO of Discover since 2004. His compensation figures for 2007 reflect his pay for the company’s entire fiscal year – as the head of the Discover unit of Morgan Stanley between Dec. 1, 2006, and June 29, 2007, and as the head of Discover the public company between June 30, 2007, and Nov. 30, 2007.

Nelms, 46, got a base salary in 2007 of $900,000 and $2.75 million in bonuses.

The filing said the CEO’s salary would rise to $1 million in 2008.

He received $18.14 million in stock awards and options in fiscal 2007, and other compensation of $6,100 – an amount that includes Discover’s contributions to his 401(k) plan.

•A jury awarded consumer products giant S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. $147 million in damages Tuesday to compensate it for losses suffered in a trucking kickback scheme.

The Racine-based maker of products such as Ziploc and Glade sued its former transportation director, Milton Morris, and a dozen other people and companies alleging a widespread scheme to bilk it out of millions of dollars.

The company had asked for more than $100 million in damages.

The company claimed Morris, trucking company owner Thomas Buske, and others inflated rates and pocketed the excess.

They paid one another with trips to places such as Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, rounds of golf and cash transferred through poker games.

•Danner, a subsidiary of LaCrosse Footwear Inc., announced Tuesday that it has received $1.3 million in orders for boots for the U.S. Marines.

Oregon-based Danner will supply 5,320 pairs of a Danner Marine Hot boot, which is built with materials to mitigate heat, in several shipments in the first half of 2008. In addition, Danner received an order to ship 3,334 pairs of a cold-weather boot by the end of the second quarter.

These new orders are in addition to the nearly $1 million in contract orders with the Marines announced earlier this month.