AT&T names new CEO, chairman

Ed Whitacre, the chairman and CEO of AT&T, will retire in June, he announced at the company’s annual shareholders meeting Friday.

Randall Stephenson, the company’s chief operating officer since 2004, will assume both roles.

AT&T will send Whitacre off with an $84.7 million pension fund, plus $73.8 million in deferred compensation. He'll also be paid more than $1 million per year for three years as a consultant for AT&T, during which time his benefits will continue, and AT&T will pay $15,600 of his taxes each year.

Whitacre, 65, was expected to stay on another year. He signed a five-year employment contract with SBC in 2001, meant to retain him long enough to oversee the integration of two major acquisitions: those of Pacific Telesis and Ameritech, which were closed in 1997 and 1999, respectively. That contract was originally set to expire on Nov. 15, 2006. But in March 2006, the company extended it through April 2008 to allow Whitacre to oversee the integration of AT&T (with SBC Communications) and BellSouth.