Constellation Brands CEO drew $6.2M compensation

Sands, 50, replaced his elder brother Richard as CEO last July after five years as president and chief operating officer. Based in suburban Rochester, Constellation Brands sells beer and spirits and is the world's biggest winemaker by volume.

For the year ended Feb. 29, Robert Sands drew a salary of $978,070, a bonus of $606,403, $835,663 in performance incentives plus perks worth $205,549, most of which was use of company aircraft.

He also received stock and options valued at $3.59 million, according to a proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that was issued at the company's annual meeting here Thursday.

In fiscal 2007, he received $1.5 million in compensation.

Richard Sands, 56, who switched to chairman after 14 years at the helm, had compensation valued at $4.1 million in fiscal 2007. In the latest fiscal year, he received nearly $7.3 million, including stock and options with an estimated value of $4.2 million.

The Associated Press calculations of total pay include executives' salary, bonus, incentives, perks, the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year and above-market returns on deferred compensation. The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits and sometimes differ from the totals released by the companies.

Hit by a fourth-quarter impairment charge of $807 million on its wine businesses in Australia and Britain, the company posted a $613 million loss for all of fiscal 2008. Its first-quarter profit through May jumped 50 percent, lifted by strong sales of newly acquired, higher-margin wine brands such as Clos du Bois and Wild Horse.

Constellation Brands bought Australian vintner BRL Hardy Ltd. for $1.1 billion in cash and stock in a 2003 deal that made it the world's largest wine business. It jumped further ahead of longtime wine leader E.& J. Gallo Winery of Modesto, Calif., when it bought Robert Mondavi Corp. for $1.3 billion.

Its 300-plus brands run from jug wines to coveted California reds, beer imports such as Corona and St. Pauli Girl and liquors like Fleischmann's vodka and Black Velvet Canadian whiskey.