A Toll Bros. problem strikes close to home
Among cancellations is one by a family member.
Luxury home builder Toll Bros. Inc. has had hundreds of canceled orders in the last few months, but one struck especially close to home.
Bruce E. Toll's daughter, Wendy Topkis, and her husband told the company last month that they would not go through with the purchase of a $2.47 million condominium in Florida, Toll Bros. said yesterday in the proxy statement filed for its annual meeting on March 12.
"They were thinking about moving to Florida, but they changed their mind," Toll, the company's cofounder and vice chairman, told Bloomberg News. "She canceled it because she had another child" and the condominium would have been too small, he said.
Toll Bros.' policy on transactions between the company and people or companies related to management requires public disclosure of deals worth more than $120,000.
In another sign of home builders' recent struggles, Toll Bros. said in the proxy that it paid Robert I. Toll, the company's chief executive officer and Bruce Toll's brother, $8.4 million in the latest fiscal year - less than half the sum he had received a year earlier.
The filing listed Toll's salary for fiscal 2007 at $1.3 million. He also received $7 million in stock options and $94,000 in other payments, including about $26,000 for auto and gasoline expenses and almost $35,000 for tax and financial-statement preparation.
Toll's 2006 compensation was about $19.2 million, including a $17.5 million bonus.
There was no such bonus in the latest package, for a year in which the subprime-mortgage crisis and other economic woes hammered the company's business, along with that of other home builders.
The company's fiscal 2007 profit dropped 95 percent, to $35.7 million. Its fiscal year ended in October.
Revenue for the fiscal 2008 first quarter, which ended Jan. 31, likely will be down 22 percent from a year ago, Toll Bros. said earlier this week.
Robert Toll's bonus had been falling in recent years. It was $30.4 million in 2004 and $27.3 million in 2005. He holds 29.1 million of the company's shares, or 17.4 percent of the total. At the company's annual meeting last year, chief financial officer Joel Rassman said he expected Robert Toll to earn a fiscal 2007 bonus of $700,000 to $3 million.
In addition to his role at the home-building company, Bruce Toll is chairman of Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., which owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com.
Compensation for specific board members need not be disclosed in proxy filings. Toll's directors are paid $1,750 to $5,000 per meeting.
Toll shares closed down 7 cents at $21.11 on the New York Stock Exchange.