Report: Two CEOs paid over $1 billion in past decade
It pays to be at the top of the corporate food chain. It really pays.
Larry Ellison
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of software maker Oracle, topped the list of best-paid executives of public companies during the past decade. Ellison received $1.84 billion in compensation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of CEO pay.
Barry Diller came in second on the compensation list, the WSJ reports. Diller received $1.14 billion from IAC/InterActive and Expedia.com, the online travel site IAC spun off in 2005, where he remains chairman.
Rounding out the top five were Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani at $857 million, Apple’s Steve Jobs with $749 million and Capital One Financial’s Richard Fairbank at $569 million, the WSJ said.
No Georgia CEO made the list of the top 25. No woman is on the list.
Four of the top 25 CEOs worked at financial companies, the WSJ reports. The newspaper’s analysis includes salaries, bonuses, perks and realized gains on both restricted stock and stock options.
Shareholders at some companies benefited along with the CEOs, the WSJ reports. For example, Oracle shareholders saw the value of their stock triple, while shareholders of Apple saw their stock soar nearly 12 times over.
But four of the 10 highest-earning executives ran companies whose shareholders lost money over the decade: IAC/InterActive, Countrywide, Capital One and Cendant, the WSJ says.
Is any CEO worth this type of money?
For the CEOs who built their companies from scratch, is this a just reward? Much too excessive?
What does this say about CEO “pay-for-performance” formulas?
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55 comments Add your comment
MTA
July 28th, 2010
3:09 pm
No shaggy my hands were not shaking – thugs don’t frighten me
shaggy
July 28th, 2010
3:44 pm
MTA,
I am as far from being a thug as you are from being a genius. VERY, VERY far.
So, your hands weren’t shaking, but caught you foaming drool from the mouth. That’s just nasty.
Jason
July 28th, 2010
7:54 pm
The CEO of most big companies already have enough money for their grandchildren to live without working. If they would take their multi-million dollar salaries and put it towards the employees they are laying off and use what Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus did at Home Depot (listen to and implement the feed back of the employees about the customers and company) these companies would do well. That is one of the reasons Home Depot did so well under Blank and Marcus.
Realist
July 30th, 2010
9:34 am
Folks who are whining: the ebb and flow of economics and capitalism escapes your ability to understand it. You have nots want to blame society and corporations and everyone but yourself for the situation you are in. Granted, bad luck can happen to anybody, but if you have done what you need to do than you can survive and thrive in this great CAPITALIST society of ours.
What?…their you are with your Bush deficit statement. Are you completely naive to what the deficit has come to be since Obama took office and what the projection is for the national debt under his policies?
MTA, you sound like a jealous have not (as much as you want). IF you have the ability to succeed you will.
Funny how so many people are more worried about buying bling and trying to look like those they idolize in pop culture than actually make it themselves. I have seen more flash the cash wannabe’s than I can believe could exist. Yeah, they’re real cool or bad or whatever, but beneath the fake exterior likely is a person without a pot to pee in.
Build your own future, get a trade, re-educate, never stop improving yourself, make an honest living, and if you have the ability…start a company and become the next Larry Ellison or Bill Gates and reap what you sow.
Realist
July 30th, 2010
9:45 am
MTA…yeah let’s hire foriegn CEO’s (like you have any say in the matter of U.S. corporations and how they run themselves)…that’s comical.
Are you one of those who would open the borders to illegals and give your country over to the rest of the world too?
America was built on the backs of people like these guys who innovated and worked their a$$ off to create industry and jobs for millions of people. If they play by the rules, they deserve every penny they get.