Rick Wagoner

DETROIT — Former General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will retire Aug. 1 with a pension and benefit package the automaker valued at more than $10 million.

Wagoner, 56, who was ousted by the Obama administration on March 30, will get $1.64 million in benefits annually for each of the next five years, plus an annual pension of $74,030 for the rest of his life, according to company documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The former CEO, who spent 32 years with the company, can also choose to cash out his company-provided life insurance policy at $2.6 million, according to the filing.

The benefits are worth about half the $22.1 million value that the company placed on Wagoner's retirement package at the end of 2008. The severance package is also far smaller than those afforded to many other large-company CEOs in the past, before the market meltdown made compensation practices a touchstone for public and congressional outrage.

Lee Raymond, former chairman of energy giant ExxonMobil, received a nearly $400 million retirement package in 2006. Stan O'Neal, ousted from Merrill Lynch in 2007 after the investment bank reported a huge quarterly loss, walked away with $161.5 million in stock, options and retirement benefits. Walt Disney Co. directors awarded a $140 million severance package to Michael Ovitz at the end of his brief stint in the mid-1990s as president of the entertainment company.

Although many GM retirees whose benefits have been cut or investors who lost money may consider Wagoner's package excessive, it is not out of line in comparison to other executives' pay, said Aaron Boyd, a research manager with Equilar Inc.