Lydall Inc. wooed Robert K. Julian with a $275,000 signing bonus to take over as chief financial officer for the Manchester manufacturer of automotive thermal and acoustic shielding and biomedical containers, a regulatory filing shows. The company also announced a price hike.
Lydall announced last week the hiring of Julian, 50, the outgoing senior vice president and finance chief for Legrand North America, a unit of France’s Legrand SA. Legrand makes parts and components for electrical systems and information networks installed in homes and commercial buildings.
Julian will be an executive vice president at Lydall.
There, Julian will draw a $350,000 annual salary, plus a $1,150 monthly car allowance, among other unspecified company benefits, Lydall’s 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows.
He also is eligible for an incentive stock option to buy 30,000 shares of Lydall common at the market price at the time of the grant, the filing said.
In addition, the filing disclosed that Julian’s predecessor, Erika H. Steiner, is departing with a severance package specified in her contract, including one year’s salary ($280,087, in 2011), bonus and health benefits. Steiner, 56, also gets help finding another job.
Meantime, Lydall is raising prices, starting with shipments after Dec. 1, between 2 percent to 6 percent for most of its performance materials products, with some climbing as much as 15 percent. Those products include cryogenic insulation for containers used to deep-freeze human tissues.
The company says hike is necessary to recoup its rising raw materials costs and its investments in quality, capacity, service and innovation.
