NEW YORK, April 28: AT&T chairman and chief executive Edward Whitacre will retire with a $158.5m payout, figures released from a corporate watchdog group showed on Friday.

Whitacre’s retirement was announced on Friday by the US telecommunications giant. He will be replaced by Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief operating officer, on June 3.

The retirement was announced at a shareholders’ meeting in San Antonio, Texas. But the pay package was revealed in documents sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in late March, according to the Corporate Library, a research group focusing on corporate governance.

The group said its calculations showed the payout was the third largest retirement package in US corporate history after the $351m awarded to departing ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond in 2005 and the $202m payout to Richard Handler, the former head of Wall Street firm Jefferies and Co.

The retirement pay includes a number of components for Whitacre, who will remain a consultant to AT&T over the next three years. It includes the use of a company jet, automobile, and medical care.—AFP