During his early years, he worked with Occidental CEO Armand Hammer, who at age 91, named Irani his successor in February 1990.
Prior to working for Occidental, he was president and chief operating officer of Olin Corporation, a chemicals and metals company.
An Occidental spokesman said that Irani's participation in the tax avoidance scheme was a personal matter and was not a violation of the company's code of conduct policy.
[10] Irani was awarded a $900,000 cash bonus by the Occidental board of directors for exceptional performance in implementing a cost-cutting initiative (including reduction in force job terminations) in anticipation of a "world-wide economic deterioration."
[11] Chazen collected $38,080,344 and Irani $76,107,010 in fiscal year 2010, nearly doubling his 2009 compensation despite shareholder outrage over the Occidental board of directors executive pay policies.
[12][13] Irani retired as CEO on May 10, 2011, after the California State Teachers' Retirement System and Relational Investors, two major institutional Occidental Investors, objected to the company's compensation policies and announced plans to replace long-term board members who were described as "ossified" in a letter written in protest of Irani's salary.
[15] In 2010, former CFO and later president Stephen Chazen was named CEO of Occidental to replace Irani,[16][17][18] who planned to stay on as executive chairman until 2014.
[23] Irani chaired the KB Home executive compensation committee during the time period when CEO Bruce Karatz lied about the company's practice of backdating options.