Chief of USA Truck tops $1M pay in '17
USA Truck Chief Executive Officer James Reed earned $1.04 million in total compensation in 2017, according to the company's annual proxy statement.
Reed's pay included $393,205 in salary, $184,983 in non-equity incentive plan compensation, $69,283 in bonuses and $39,747 in additional earnings. He also earned $351,987 in stock awards.
Reed's total compensation was 28 times the median annual total compensation of all USA Truck employees ($37,468). The pay ratio disclosure is required under the Dodd-Frank financial law.
Chief Financial Officer James Bates earned $970,567 in 2017, while chief commercial officer and logistics president James Craig was paid $882,525.
Werner Hugo, senior vice president of trucking operations, earned $582,915 last year, and Chief Technology Officer Kimberly Littlejohn's total compensation was $507,926.
Van Buren-based USA Truck will hold its annual shareholders meeting on May 16 at 10 a.m.
-- Robbie Neiswanger
Ex-LR insurer faces theft, fraud counts
Joshua Eric Casada, 45, of Pine Bluff was arrested Thursday in Pulaski County on multiple counts, including felony insurance fraud, the Arkansas Insurance Department said Friday.
Casada, owner of the Little Rock-based Casada Insurance Group, surrendered on a single charge of theft of property exceeding $25,000, 11 counts of forgery and 10 counts of committing a fraudulent insurance act, all felonies, stemming from incidents between August and October.
Casada is accused of submitting 11 fictitious and fraudulent premium finance agreements totaling $211,293 to the Imperial Premium Finance Corp. The agreements requested premium financing on policies taken out on behalf of some Jefferson County farmers. The insurance department said this was done without the farmers' knowledge or for entirely fictitious entities. Investigators said the money was then deposited in the Casada Insurance Group bank account.
The Arkansas Insurance Department revoked the licenses for Casada and the Casada Insurance Group in December.
-- David Smith
State index closes week with 6.44 loss
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, fell 6.44 to 394.72 Friday.
Murphy USA shares fell 6.4 percent while Murphy Oil gained 1.1 percent in average volume.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business on 04/14/2018