Company: ABR-PF
Filing Date: 2025-04-17
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001628280-25-018236
Chunk: 34

Company: ARBOR REALTY TRUST INC
Filing Date: 2025-04-17
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 34
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 Director, Chief Audit Executive, Chief Risk Officer and Chief Accounting Officer. From 2000 to 2004, he served in various accounting and financial reporting roles at Computer Associates, a publicly traded, global software company. Mr. Ridings also worked at Ernst & Young where he held various positions in their assurance services practice from 1990 to 2000. He is a Certified Public Accountant.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

### EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

### Compensation Discussion and Analysis

#### Compensation Philosophy and Principles
The Compensation Committee is aware that the real estate finance industry is highly competitive and that experienced professionals have significant career mobility. We compete for executive talent with a large number of real estate investment companies and specialty finance companies, some of which are privately owned and some of which are publicly traded and have significantly larger market capitalization than us. We are a specialized company in a highly competitive industry and our ability to attract, retain and appropriately reward our NEOs and other key employees is essential to maintaining our competitive position in the real estate finance industry. For 2024, our NEOs are Mr. Kaufman, our CEO, Mr. Elenio, our CFO, and Messrs. Kilgore, Katz and van der Reis, the three most highly compensated executive officers (other than our CEO and our CFO) who were serving as our executive officers as of the end of 2024.

The Compensation Committee’s goal is to maintain compensation programs that are competitive within our industry, reward executives if we achieve our operational, financial and strategic goals and build stockholder value. In determining the form and amount of compensation payable to the NEOs, the Compensation Committee is guided by the following objectives and principles:

• Compensation levels should be sufficiently competitive to attract, motivate and retain key executives . We aim to ensure our executive compensation program attracts, motivates and retains high performance talent and appropriately rewards them for the Company achieving and maintaining a competitive position in our industry. The Compensation Committee believes that total compensation should increase with position and responsibility.

• Compensation related directly to performance and incentive compensation should constitute a substantial portion of total compensation . We aim to promote a pay-for-performance culture, with a substantial portion of total compensation being “at risk.” Accordingly, a substantial portion of total compensation should be tied to and vary with our operational, financial and strategic performance, as well as individual performance. The Compensation Committee believes that executives with greater responsibility and thereby the ability to directly impact our strategic goals and long-term results should