T-Mobile paid John Legere $137 million during his last three months as CEO

In April 2020, John Legere left T-Mobile turning over the reins of the operation to his former right-hand man Mike Sievert. The carrier's current CEO has the company running on all cylinders like it was under Legere. When the unorthodox executive joined T-Mobile in 2012, it was the start of an amazing turnaround that made it the most innovative wireless provider in the states.

Despite working just three months in 2020, Legere was paid a whopping $137 million from T-Mobile. The carrier was forced to file this information with the SEC this week (via ars technica) which revealed that it paid Legere $27.8 million in 2019 and $66.5 million in 2018 mostly in the form of stock awards. Last year's pay consisted of a $136.55 million severance payment, a $600,000 pay check, and $50,000 in reimbursement for legal fees.

But John wasn't the only T-Mobile executive who took home a generous pay check from T-Mobile last year. New CEO Sievert was given stock awards, salary, bonuses and incentives totaling $54.9 million in 2020. He was paid $35.6 million and $16.4 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Legere returned his key to the executive restroom on April 1st, 2020, the day that the merger he announced almost two years earlier between T-Mobile and Sprint was closed. The deal was all about 5G as the carrier went after Sprint's hoard of mid-band spectrum. Combined with its low-band 600MHz airwaves and some mmWave spectrum, the mid-band spectrum T-Mobile acquired from Sprint was the final piece of the triple-layer cake strategy that has many analysts' expecting T-Mobile to deliver the fastest 5G download data speeds in the states once 5G networks are all built-out in the U.S.

Originally, Legere said that the merger would lead to the creation of 11,000 more jobs than the amount that both T-Mobile and Sprint would have had on a standalone basis by 2024. However, the company has cut approximately 5,000 jobs since the merger closed leading the Communication Workers of America (CWA) to say last month, "That's why we pushed for enforceable commitments from T-Mobile on jobs during the merger process. Regulators need to take a close look at what's happening at T-Mobile and get serious about protecting jobs as part of their oversight of corporate mergers."

But Legere's prediction still has three years remaining, and as it turns out, the CWA might want to prepare itself for all of the egg it might end up wearing on its face. Four months after the merger was announced in 2018, the CWA said that it expected the deal to lead to the removal of over 28,000 jobs at the merged carrier. To repeat, so far that number has amounted to the removal of only 5,000 jobs.