Drastic cuts in bonuses have been common in executive board rooms this year. But the praise Intuit heaped on its executives is not quite so frequent in the proxy materials that provide figures for compensation of named executives of public companies. In Smith's case, his bonus of $828,000 for 2009 year compared to $1.7 million the prior year. But the value of option awards rose to just under $1.4 million from just under $956,000 a year ago while his stock awards were valued at $1.74 million, up from $1.15 million.
 
The proxy material also gives an indication of the firepower held by Relational Investors, who withdrew a three-member slate for the Intuit board of directors in exchange for placing David Batchelder, one of its principals, on the ballot for this year's election to be decided at the annual meeting of shareholders on December 15. Batchelder and various entities owned by or managed by Relational hold 13,150,500 shares of Intuit stock, or 4.11 percent of the total. As part of the deal to put Batchelder on the board, Relational agreed to limit its stock purchases to just under 10 percent of the common shares outstanding. Relational is known for targeting companies it considers underperforming, and sometimes that it considers to be overpaying its leaders. It had apparently ramped up its holding in recent months as on June 30, it reported owning just over 8 million shares, then valued at $226.7 million.

The word "outstanding" was used a lot in the SEC documents filed last week, and not just in connection with the number of shares on the market. The Compensation Committee also found Smith "had delivered outstanding performance on the following one-year operational goals ..." The word was also used to characterize the performance of CEO Neil Williams, Kiran Patel, who took over as EVP of Intuit's Small Business Group in December and Sassan Goodarzi, who moved into the spot as SVP and president and general manager of the Intuit Financial Institutions. The only executive who got a lower rating was Alexander Lintner, the head of Intuit's Global Division, who was cited for strong performance.
CFO Williams did the best in the percentage of increase with compensation of $1.9 million for the latest fiscal year compared to $985,447 for fiscal 2008. Lintner's compensation dropped to $1.64 million for 2009, down from $1.98 million.

Pay for the other executives also fell, although the mid-year job changes of Goodarzi and Patel meant comparisons to last year's pay were not equal. Goodarzi's overall pay fell to $1.9 million to $2.8 million. However, Goodarzi's pay for 2008 reflect just over $1 million related to his relocated to California from Texas for his new job. That included $523,066 to cover the loss on the sale of his house, which he had purchased as a result of an Intuit-requested move from Colorado, along with $291,045 for tax gross-up for that compensation. Patel's total dropped to $3.4 million from $4.1 million.