Safeway Tweaks Incentive Program

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway’s top executives in 2012 can earn a new type of incentive award that better links pay to the company’s financial performance.

Safeway in a federal filing this week said its board of directors had approved a change in the company’s long-term incentive plan that will offer executives a combination of stock options and performance share awards in 2012, as opposed to the time-vested restricted stock awards it offered in 2011.

Safeway said the performance awards would vest upon achievement of various business criteria — likely to be earnings-per-share goals on a compound basis. The stock options will vest at a rate of 25% per year over four years, as opposed to 2011’s restricted stock options that vested over five years, the filing said.

Safeway said the change in the long-term incentive plan would advance goals of its compensation strategy to motivate employees to achieve goals that benefit the company.

Executives eligible for the new awards are Steve Burd, Safeway’s chairman and chief executive officer, along with Robert Edwards, its chief financial officer; Diane Dietz, chief marketing officer; Bruce Everette, executive vice president of retail operations; and Laree Renda, president of Safeway Health.