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Dow-DuPont: Millions for cost-cutting CEOs

Read the pre-merger financial plan

Dow Chemical Co. and the DuPont Co. have agreed to pay Dow's lame-duck CEO, Andrew Liveris, $52.8 million in cash, stock and tax reimbursement payments if he leaves on schedule in 2017, and another $27 million to DuPont CEO Edward Breen if Breen, Liveris' partner in the companies' merger and break-up plan, leaves the company by early 2017, the companies said in this SEC filing.

The executives have assembled these multimillion-dollar pay packages, which the SEC-mandated report calls "Golden Parachutes," while planning and executing billions of dollars in cost cuts and mass layoffs, including 1,700 research scientists, technicians, lawyers, corporate managers and other central staff in Delaware, where DuPont is headquartered. The filing noted Breen has also piled up DuPont stock options worth $7 million, which could be worth much more if his merger and breakup plan succeeds in significantly boosting share values.

The filing notes Liveris would have gotten all but $13 million of the total even without the merger, after running Dow for a decade.