With Mucci replaced Jonathan Judge, who resigned in July after serving as CEO since 2004. Golisano spoke repeatedly during this week's earnings Webcast about his unhappiness about the way the company had performed in that time, without ever mentioning the prior CEO. Golisano especially noted what he called a reluctance to change that had led to his own involvement in the last few months. Golisano also said that problems with Paychex's performance were 70 percent internal and 30 percent everything else.
Judge didn't stay long on the unemployment line as he was named CEO of First Data Corp., a payments processing vendor on Wednesday. Judge received a base salary of $1.5 million, a signing bonus of $5 million and a prorated guaranteed annual target bonus for 2010 based on the full-year $2.5 million target bonus. Judge had a base salary of $950,000 at Paychex and a total compensation of $4.66 million for the year ended May 30. As SVP, Mucci had $429,003 in base pay for fiscal 2010 and total compensation of $1.26 million. His compensation as CEO has not been announced.
Referring to the issue of the new CEO being able to work with him, Golisano raised the issue of his reputation and then said, "I don't know. I'd have to ask our opinion of whether I'm difficult to work with."
"Can I ask Morphy?," joked one analyst, referring to CFO John Morphy, who also participated in the conference call. "No, I don't think so," Morphy responded. Golisano said that any insider named as CEO would probably continue Paychex's philosophy.
Golisano had hinted at some important changes in additional products. He spoke Tuesday of what he saw as neglected opportunities to expand internationally. And he said in six months there would probably be information on new, but related products that could be sold through the existing channels.