A farewell package of $89K -- per month?

John Krenicki put in 29 years at General Electric (GE), working his way up to lead the company's energy unit. He was an important guy there, one that Fortune speculated could be CEO one day.

Instead, he's retiring at the end of this year and will get a nice perk from the company: An $89,000 monthly allowance until he turns 60. He's about 50 now, so it will all add up to more than $10 million. In return, the company says in a regulatory filing, Krenicki can't go work for a competing company for three years.

This news was buried in a GE filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year and uncovered by the ever-vigilant blog Footnoted. It's now in first place in Footnoted's annual contest for the worst item of the year.

Krenicki will also get a cash bonus of at least $2.9 million for 2012. He also gets to vest at age 60 under GE's supplementary pension plan. And Footnoted notes that some 2 million stock options that had not vested as of last year will now vest. GE's stock price was at $20.79 Wednesday, so Krenicki stands to pocket some serious change by selling shares.

Krenicki was a lifer at GE, and his career was profiled in Fortune last year. He relocated his family 11 times while at the company, including two stints in Europe. He led the plastics division for nearly three years before he was promoted to run the energy division. He admitted to Fortune that he didn't want to become CEO of the company -- an early indicator, perhaps, that he was on the way to retirement.

By the way, Footnoted has another candidate for worst item of the year that I like even better. Dell (DELL) spent $1.9 million to move executive Stephen Schuckenbrock from Round Rock, Texas, to Plano, Texas. That's quite a pricey move for going 200 miles. About $1.5 million of that total was to pay Schuckenbrock for the loss on the sale of his house in Round Rock.

Schuckenbrock didn't stay for very long after the move. Earlier this month, he resigned "to seek new opportunities."

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