Wagoner retires with reduced benefits

DETROIT (Reuters) - Former General Motors GMGMQ.PK Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, ousted in March by the Obama administration, will voluntarily retire on August 1 with sharply reduced benefits, the company said on Tuesday.

The value of Wagoner's retirement package is about 60 percent lower than it would have been at the end of last year, before the largest U.S. automaker fell into a government-funded bankruptcy and its assets were sold to a new GM, federal regulatory filings show.

The former top GM executive reached a retirement agreement with the old GM, now renamed Motors Liquidation Co, on July 8 and will retire officially from the new GM taking benefit cuts consistent with other retirees, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Over the first five years of retirement, Wagoner will be paid almost $8.6 million (5.3 million pounds), down from the nearly $23 million he was entitled to receive at the end of last year.

Based on 32 years service to GM, Wagoner is entitled to an annual $74,030 under the salaried retirement program and five instalments of about $1.64 million under the executive retirement plan.

Wagoner had been entitled to five payments of more than $4.5 million each as of the end of 2008 under GM's executive plan and $68,900 per year under the salaried program, according to the last GM annual report.

Wagoner will continue to receive personal liability insurance until January 1. He also will receive an existing life insurance policy or its cash value, currently nearly $2.6 million.

(Reporting by David Bailey; editing by Andre Grenon)