NY Times Survey of Highest-Paid CEOs

Recently, The New York Times published its annual survey of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in America in an article entitled “In Executive Pay, a Rich Game of Thrones.” The article discusses the compensation packages of the top CEOs and illustrates overall executive compensation trends at the most successful U.S. companies.

(Here’s the NYT article: http://tinyurl.com/6q7j8db)

Equilar, the company who supplies the compensation data for NYT’s surveys each year, took it a step further and wrote a follow-up analysis of the NYT’s study. (Link to Equilar’s response: http://tinyurl.com/7lbldxh)

A few of their key findings:

• CEOs from Consumer Goods companies make up the largest share of the list, while Utilities make up the smallest group.
• Technology CEOs received the most equity, with 90 percent of compensation received in options or stock/units. On the other hand, Industrial companies paid out 53 percent of compensation in cash.
• Among all CEOs on the list, 50 percent of all value was given through time- and performance-based stock awards.

Among many other points, the NYT’s article makes the bold statement that business is back to usual following the 2009 recession. CEOs are back to taking large base salaries and even more in terms of stock awards. Seven-figures is the new six-figures.