As a part of its special report on executive pay, the Times did some investigating into how much coin top CEOs brought in last year. The answer: a whole lot. Their study looked at the salaries for 200 CEOs at 199 companies with revenues of at least $5.78 billion (Motorola has two CEOs). It found that the average pay for these CEOs was $9.5 million. That’s a lot, but it’s still down 15 percent from the year before, making 2009 the second consecutive year that CEO pay decreased. Not that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison noticed. He led the pack with an $85 million salary.
Worse than the decrease in pay, might be the decrease in perks, which fell by 14 percent to $261,801. The study, which was performed by Equilar, included twelve CEOs from companies that received TARP money. Among that group, the median pay was $6 million in 2009, with Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis coming in at the bottom with a $32,171 salary and Wells Fargo’s John Stumpf leading the pack with a $19 million salary.
Bargain Rates for a C.E.O.? [NYT]
