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Neidorff, the highest-paid CEO in ºüÀêÊÓƵ for the last six years, had earned $26.4 million in 2019, including $7.1 million in cash bonuses.

Last year's pay package, disclosed in a filed Tuesday, included two bonuses: an annual incentive payment of $1.7 million and a long-term bonus of slightly more than $3 million.

Centene exceeded its financial goals last year, so executives could have qualified for annual bonuses of up to double the target amount. The board's compensation committee, though, "believed strongly that 2020 bonuses should be limited to the target payout in light of the pandemic," the document says.

The long-term bonus was just 92% of the target amount because Centene ranked below average on a shareholder-return measure.

Neidorff's salary rose 20% last year to $1.8 million. He also received stock worth $14.9 million and options valued at $2.9 million.

Sixty percent of the stock is performance-based, and is contingent on Centene meeting three-year goals for revenue growth and profit margins. A similar stock award from 2018 paid out at 152% of the target amount because the company exceeded its three-year goals.

Neidorff also received perquisites including $101,819 worth of personal flights on company planes; $146,500 of life insurance; $76,218 of security services; plus unspecified amounts of tax preparation and financial adviser fees and entertainment event tickets.

Neidorff earned 362 times as much as the median Centene employee, down from 2019's pay ratio of 383 times. The company calculated median pay of $68,987 for its 71,027 employees.

Centene, a Clayton-based health-care company, reported  a 1% drop in earnings per share last year, but the results included one-time costs from the acquisition of WellCare Health Plans. Its share price fell 5%.

Last year's say-on-pay vote earned just 67% shareholder support, which the company said "was below what the board and management consider satisfactory." Directors met with 15 major shareholders to listen to their concerns.

In another governance-related development, Centene's board is recommending that shareholders approve a resolution recommending that all directors be elected annually instead of serving staggered three-year terms. California-based shareholder John Chevedden submitted the resolution, and the board decided to support it despite believing, as the proxy statement says, that "three-year terms enhance the independence of the non-employee directors."

Major institutional investors generally favor annual elections. Staggered board terms once were common, but now are rare among large companies.

Here's what ºüÀêÊÓƵ CEOs earned in 2019: