The news is out that the average compensation for CEOs has finally dropped for the first time in five years. Great! Now the highly paid corporate servants are only receiving a compensation package worth $10.8 million on average, instead of $11.3 million: the decrease has been a measly 5%! Despite such a “cut” in compensation, there are still very well-paid CEOs out there. Take for instance one who took in a massive $104.4 million (with $103.6 million from stock options and grants). That would be Sanjah Jha of Motorola. Here is a quick list of who made off with the multi-millions last year:
CEO Paychecks Last Year
- Sanjah Jha, CEO of Motorola: $104.4 million
- Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle: $84.6 million
- Robert Iger, of Disney: $51.1 million
- Kenneth Chenault, of American Express: $42.8 million
- Vikram Pandit, of Citigroup: $38.2 million
Reported numbers are showing that executives in the financial services industry are seeing a decline in pay relative to those in other industries. So yeah, overall compensation is getting adjusted accordingly, with median pay of CEOs of troubled companies falling by 40%.
Still, it’s interesting to see how there are still paycheck winners during this recession: there’s still a good handful who won’t feel the pain and shock of a sluggish economy while the rest of us suffer along (with some of us facing job layoffs or even opting to work for minimum wage to tide ourselves over) until the next economic upswing.
Hey – you left me off the list! Just kidding. It’s comforting to see the salaries adjusting somewhat to the economy, but still – that’s still just crazy money.
I deserved every dollar of that $42 or $50 million. Do you realize how many jobs I had to cut to make that much money?