Exxon Mobil's Principal Financial Officer Announces Retirement

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) is losing another key member of the company. The oil giant (or now oil and gas giant) has announced that Donald Humphreys is retiring. The position he holds is “vice president and principal financial officer” but this is the equivalent of its Chief Financial Officer or CFO.

Humphreys is not retiring by stepping down immediately. His formal retirement date is being set at February 1, 2013. He is 64 years old and he has been with the company for what was said to be more than 36 years with his tenure on the management committee going back to 2006. Exxon said that in addition to the financial role, he has also been responsible for ExxonMobil’s fuels, lubricants and specialties marketing and global services operations.

Investors usually hate when a well-heeled financial officer leaves a company because the finance guys generally know the real ins and outs of the company’s books. The good news is that this retirement does not look any different on the surface than merely what it is being called. Exxon previously had a senior official and board retirement age of no older than 72, but that may not be the case and the caveat was that it was “No unless the Board approves an exception to the guideline on a case by case basis.” With the retirement being set more than sixty days out this seems to be a normal retirement.

Exxon Mobil is down 0.2% at $87.93 today against a 52-week range of $77.13 to $93.67. The company is the second largest by market cap in America with a market cap of $401 billion. Humphreys appears to have been paid some $4.3 million in 2011 without consideration for options exercised according to Yahoo! Finance.

JON C. OGG