Edison executive pay soars despite devastating Eaton fire
Edison International boosted the pay of its top executives last year despite their responsibility for the safety of the company’s power lines before the devastating Eaton fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena and killed 19 people.
Although the company cut cash bonuses for its senior executives, citing the wildfires, their overall compensation went up substantially as the utility’s profit soared in 2025.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of the parent company of Southern California Edison, received $16.6 million in cash, stock and other compensation last year, up 20% from 2024, according to a new company filing.
Steven Powell, president of Southern California Edison, received compensation totaling $6.5 million last year, up from $3.9 million in 2024 — a jump of more than 65%.
The utility’s transmission equipment is suspected of igniting two wildfires on Jan. 7, 2025, including the Eaton fire, which left thousands of families homeless.
The Times earlier detailed how Edison fell behind in performing maintenance on its aging transmission lines — work that it had told state utility regulators was needed. County prosecutors are investigating whether Edison should be criminally charged for its actions before the fire.
The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not been released and Edison has denied that it acted negligently. Pizarro has said a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which the company had not used for 50 years, may have briefly reenergized, igniting the fire.
A state law championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 protects utilities from paying for the damage due to fires sparked by their equipment. When it passed, Newsom touted the law’s requirement that utilities must tie executive compensation to their safety record, saying it would keep them accountable.
The law said that a utility “may” consider tying 100% of executive bonuses to safety performance and “denying all incentive compensation in the event the electrical corporation causes a catastrophic wildfire that results in one or more fatalities.”
Edison said in the new filing that the company’s board members who determine executive compensation decided to decrease the cash bonuses of Pizarro, Powell and Jill Anderson, the utility’s chief operating officer, because of the 2025 wildfires.
Pizarro’s cash bonus was cut by more than $1 million while Powell’s was trimmed by $442,000, according to the filing. Anderson lost out on $244,000.
The company, based in Rosemead, said its decision to cut the three executives’ cash bonuses “was not a reflection of the performance of the company or these executives.”
Despite those cuts, the executives’ total pay of salary, bonuses, stock and other compensation rose, according to the filing. That’s because Edison ties most executive compensation not to safety, but to the company’s financial performance.
And last year, Edison’s profit jumped more than 200% — from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion — despite the Eaton disaster.
The profit increase resulted from the protections from wildfire damage provided to Edison by the 2019 law, as well as a 13% hike in customer electricity rates in October.
The utility attributed the higher electric bills to several increases that it successfully lobbied the California Public Utilities Commission to approve. All five members of the commission were appointed by Newsom.
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Tuesday that Pizarro and other company executives holding stock took a financial hit after the fires when the price plummeted.
Before the January fires, Edison International’s stock price was about $80. It fell to $50 the next month. It has recovered much of its value, closing on Tuesday at $72.92.
Edison is facing hundreds of lawsuits by victims of the fire. The suits claim it acted negligently, including by failing to remove the old, dormant transmission line in Eaton Canyon.
The lawsuits also blame Edison for not preventatively shutting down its transmission lines Jan. 7, 2025, despite the dangerous Santa Ana winds.
Pizarro has said the winds didn’t meet the company’s threshold in place at the time for turning off those high-voltage wires.
“Our deepest sympathies remain with all those affected, and this loss reinforces our commitment to public safety and wildfire risk mitigation,” Pizarro and Peter Taylor, chairman of the parent company’s board, wrote in a letter to shareholders that was released with the details on executive compensation.
The two executives added that the company’s “long-term objective remains unchanged: to significantly reduce wildfire risk while improving safety, reliability and affordability of electric service.”
Edison is now offering to compensate Eaton fire victims, including those who lost their homes, family members, businesses and apartments. The offer requires the victims to give up their right to sue the utility. Many survivors say the utility’s offer falls short of what they lost.
Pizarro and Taylor wrote that as of March 4, more than 2,500 claims had been submitted through the program. So far, Edison has extended offers to roughly 600 victims submitting claims and made payments totaling $31 million to 212 of those people, they wrote.
The utility also has begun settling claims of property insurers that covered Altadena homes that were destroyed or damaged, paying out hundreds of millions of dollars. The settlements will help cover the insurance companies’ losses.
Edison has told its shareholders that it expects most or all of those payments to victims and insurers to be covered by a $21-billion state wildfire fund that Newsom and lawmakers created as part of Assembly Bill 1054, which became law in 2019.
Critics say the law went too far, allowing a utility to allegedly spark a deadly wildfire without financial consequences to the company or its executives.
“The predictable outcome of continuing to protect shareholders and executives from the consequences of their own negligence is not theoretical. It is observable. More catastrophic fires,” Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, wrote in an email to state wildfire fund administrators this year.
Johnson responded, saying,”Our motivation to prevent fires and any incidents is to be good neighbors and provide affordable and resilient energy. There is nothing more important than safety.”
Taylor was on the board committee that approved the compensation package for Pizarro and other top executives. For his work chairing the board, Taylor received cash and stock compensation of more than $500,000.
Johnson said Taylor’s compensation was based on “typical board chair pay” at other utilities.
The new filing said Pizarro’s total compensation of $16.6 million was 75 times the median Edison employee’s total compensation of $220,000.
The present value of Pizarro’s pension is more than $19 million, the report said.
The company is facing a challenge from one of its shareholders — John Chevedden of Redondo Beach, according to the filing.
Chevedden is asking the company’s shareholders to vote to approve his proposal that would require Pizarro and other Edison executives to hold at least 25% of the stock they had received as compensation until they reach retirement age.
He said that requiring utility executives to hold a significant portion of their stock until retirement would focus their efforts on the company’s long-term success.
Chevedden pointed to “unfavorable news reports,” including the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuits against Edison for the Eaton fire and 2022 Fairview blaze, which killed two people in Riverside County.
Edison’s board urged shareholders to vote against Chevedden’s proposal before the company’s annual meeting April 23.
The board said the company already had guidelines that “closely align the interests of officers with the long-term interests of our shareholders.”
