Odyssey Bonus

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Shipwreck Finders Net Healthy Annual Bonuses
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By WILL RODGERS wjrodgers@tampatrib.com

Published: Mar 30, 2006

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TAMPA - The co-founders of Odyssey Marine Exploration took home bonuses that added 80 percent of their $250,000 annual salaries on top of their pay in 2005, a year when the company's net income plummeted about 387 percent and revenue dropped about 43 percent.

John Morris and Greg Stemm, founders of the Tampa-based, deep-sea shipwreck exploration company, gained bonuses of $200,000 apiece last year. However, Odyssey reported a loss of $14.9 million in 2005 compared with a profit of $5.2 million in 2004, and sales last year of $10 million compared with $17.6 million the year before.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said Morris received his bonus because he helped raise capital of $15.1 million, got the company listed in three indexes and helped increase Odyssey's stock price about 41 percent.

The same filing said the basis of Stemm's bonus was his ability to generate good publicity; his willingness to travel, especially overseas; and his negotiations with governments of the United States, United Kingdom and Spain for Odyssey's search for the HMS Sussex, an 80-gun English warship lost in a severe storm in the Mediterranean Sea in 1694.

Four other executives did not receive bonuses.

Michael V. Barton, who took over as chief executive officer in November, took home $32,770; Michael J. Holmes, chief financial officer, earned $150,000; George Becker Jr., executive vice president, was paid $120,000; David A. Morris, secretary and treasurer, was paid $120,000; and Davis D. Howe, chief operating officer, took home $150,000.