GM's New Female CEO Receives Major Pay Package

General Motors says new CEO Mary Barra will get a pay package worth $14.4 million this year—a 60% increase over the pay of Dan Akerson, who she replaced last month, CNN Money reports. Barra is the first woman CEO of a major global automaker. She'll get $1.6 million in salary, $2.8 million in short-term incentives, and long-term stock compensation worth $10 million. The long-term amount is part of a new incentive plan that has to be voted on by shareholders in June.

Chairman Tim Solso said in a statement that Barra's package is line with her peer group and weighted so that most of it is based on company performance. GM said it released her pay to temper a controversy that arose last week when Fox Business and ThinkProgress mistakenly reported that Barra would make far less than Akerson (only her base pay and short-term stock bonus was being reported). Akerson's $9 million in pay and bonuses last year was limited by a cap in the US Treasury Department bailout of the automaker—a cap that was removed when the Treasury sold its last GM shares in December. (More Mary Barra stories.)