Cheney gives up multimillion-dollar job if GOP ticket wins

DALLAS (CNN) -- In accepting the No. 2 spot on the Republican ticket, Dick Cheney steps away from a company that has nearly doubled in size in his five years at its helm, and has made him a small fortune.

Gov. George W. Bush announced Tuesday that Dick Cheney will be his running mate.

Cheney, who served as head of the Defense Department during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, joined the Dallas-based Halliburton Corp. in 1995. The firm is the world's largest oil fields services company.

When Cheney took over, Halliburton was just turning around after two years of losses and had undergone a significant round of job cuts. Under his guidance, the company's stock and his personal portfolio have soared in value.

Cheney made about $2 million, plus stock options, at Halliburton in 1999. And this year's skyrocketing oil prices have boosted Halliburton's stock price from less than $40 a share in March to more than $50 in June, when Cheney sold about 100,000 shares of the company's stock -- a little less than half his holdings. The sale brought him an estimated $5.1 million.

If the Bush-Cheney ticket wins in November, he would trade that kind of earning potential in for a vice president's salary of $181,400.

While Cheney had no corporate background when he joined Halliburton, he did have experience in running the giant Pentagon and he had contacts around the world -- particularly in the oil-rich Middle East.

Analysts credit Cheney with having good people instincts and setting up an effective management team to run the day-to-day operation of the company. And during his tenure, he pulled off a coup that had eluded previous Halliburton executives -- the purchase of Texas rival Dresser Industries in 1998.

"The former CEO had attempted to carry out a merger but wasn't successful," industry analyst Robin Shoemaker said. "Dick Cheney had ... more than anything else, the personal skills to get that done."

But in a year when Democrats already are attacking the GOP presidential nominee, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, for his ties to the oil industry, Cheney's business dealings are likely to come under close scrutiny. Karl Rove, a campaign strategist for Bush, dismissed suggestions that Cheney's oil ties would hurt him in any debate with Democrats over environmental and energy policies.

"I don't see Dick Cheney's leadership in running a construction and oil service company to be a problem at all when compared to this administration's failure to have a comprehensive energy policy," Rove said.

CNN National Correspondent Tony Clark and Reuters contributed to this report.