GE Vernova will pay Claire McDonough $19.5 million on arrival, in awards its filing describes as making her whole for compensation forfeited by leaving Rivian — a sum equal to 1.35 times her entire reported pay for 2025.
The energy equipment maker disclosed the terms of an offer letter dated August 25, two days before Rivian announced that its chief financial officer would step down on October 30.
McDonough joins GE Vernova on November 1 as strategic adviser to chief executive Scott Strazik and becomes CDO on the first day of 2027.
The package splits into a one-time equity award valued at $14.5 million and a $5 million cash sign-on payment.
The cash is repayable in full if she resigns within twelve months or engages in conduct constituting cause.
VP of Finance Derek Mulvey, who has worked alongside McDonough for roughly eleven years across J.P. Morgan and Rivian, is expected to serve as interim chief financial officer.
The Trade
McDonough ongoing pay at GE Vernova is worth about half what Rivian reported paying her last year — and is structured almost as its opposite.
GE Vernova sets her base salary at $1 million, an annual bonus targeted at 100% of salary, and a long-term incentive award with a target grant value of $5,225,000, expected in 2027. The three total $7.225 million a year.
Rivian‘s proxy statement reported her 2025 compensation at $14,467,175: salary of $548,077, incentive pay of $369,563, stock awards of $5,827,536, option awards of $7,714,299 and $7,700 in other compensation.
Almost none of it was cash.
The compensation committee settled the 2025 bonuses of all three named executives in fully vested restricted stock units rather than cash, granted on March 4, 2026 at $15.10 a share.
Counting that, equity accounted for 96.2% of her compensation, and the only cash she received was her $548,077 salary.
Her annual base rate at Rivian was $600,000, raised from $425,000 on April 21, 2025; the $548,077 in the table is the blended amount earned across the year.
Against that rate, GE Vernova raises her base by 66.7% and lifts her bonus target from 75% of salary to 100%.
Why the Make-Whole Is So Large
The size of the buyout is a function of how Rivian paid her.
Her reported compensation nearly tripled in three years — $5,046,577 in 2023, $8,171,929 in 2024, $14,467,175 in 2025 — while her cash went the other way.
Salary and a cash bonus totalled $614,250 in 2023 and $517,500 in 2024; in 2025, with the bonus settled in stock, cash was her salary alone at $548,077.
The rise came entirely through equity, which vests over years and is forfeited if the holder leaves early.
An executive departing that structure walks away from unvested awards, and Rivian‘s own employment agreement with her makes that explicit. Under the terms set out in the proxy, full accelerated vesting applies only if she is terminated without cause or resigns for good reason during a change-in-control period. A voluntary resignation triggers none of it.
Her most recent grant illustrates the scale.
In April 2025 the compensation committee awarded her 522,649 restricted stock units, vesting over four years, and options over 1,045,298 shares at an exercise price of $11.15, vesting over five years.
On those schedules, a substantial portion of each was still unvested when she resigned, though Rivian has not published the outstanding balance as of Friday morning.
That is what GE Vernova’s payment is framed against.
The make-whole equity is split evenly between restricted stock units and performance stock units. The restricted units vest 33%, 33% and 34% across three years; the performance units vest after three years. Both accelerate if she is terminated without cause.
That three-year schedule, combined with the twelve-month clawback on the cash, makes the package a retention instrument as much as a replacement one.
The Share Price Behind the Numbers
Whatever the awards are worth turns on a share price well below where the stock started.
Rivian listed in November 2021 in a $13.7 billion initial public offering, one of the largest in US history, which McDonough executed within a year of joining.
By the proxy’s own pay-versus-performance disclosure, $100 invested at the first day’s close was worth $13.20 at the end of 2024.
The options granted to her in April 2025 carry an exercise price of $11.15, the closing price that day. The shares she received in lieu of her 2025 bonus were valued at $15.10.
Her compensation was nonetheless recognised at grant-date fair value, which is what a proxy statement discloses regardless of what the awards are eventually worth.
The distinction matters when comparing the two employers: $14.5 million describes what Rivian granted her in one year, not what the CFO realised.
Context
McDonough’s 2025 pay was 3.6% of what Rivian reported for founder and chief executive RJ Scaringe, whose $402,639,080 package included $373.5 million in option awards after a November 2025 grant replaced a cancelled 2021 performance award.
At GE Vernova she succeeds Ken Parks, who joined in October 2023 with three prior public-company CFO roles behind him and announced his retirement for April 2, 2027.
Under a resignation agreement dated the same day as McDonough’s offer letter, Parks keeps salary and benefits through that date and is eligible for a 2026 bonus and a prorated 2027 bonus at target — and forfeits his unvested equity awards.
Rivian has said its search for a permanent successor is evaluating internal and external candidates.
