The Highest-Paid CEOs Of 2007: AP

The 10 highest-paid CEOs for 2007 at Standard & Poor's 500 companies based on calculations by The Associated Press. The total pay figures are rounded, and are based on the AP's compensation formula, which adds up salary, perks, bonuses, above-market interest on pay set aside for later, and company estimates for the value of stock options and stock awards on the day they were granted last year.

1. Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp., $84.6 million

2. John Thain, Merrill Lynch & Co., $83.1 million

3. Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp., $67.6 million

4. Richard Adkerson, Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc., $65.3 million

5. Bob Simpson, XTO Energy Inc., $56.6 million

6. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $53.9 million

7. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co., $51.7 million

8. Eugene Isenberg, Nabors Industries Ltd., $44.6 million

9. John Mack, Morgan Stanley, $41.7 million

10. Glenn Murphy, Gap Inc., $39.1 million

Comments

[therealredstateblues]

The problem isn't so much the amount of pay as it is accountability

CEO pay should be tied to company performance

CEO pay should be transparent to the employees and investors

CEO pay should be accountable to and voted upon by boards and shareholders

If the CEO's perforamce can justify his salary more power to him

We simply don't need any more Koslowski's that enrich themselves as they shutter plants and layoff workers

Or Lay's who manipulate markets for their own personal gain

Or Nardellis who run companies into the ground and pocket 210 million going out the door


These clowns only have themselves to blame for calling attn to their excesses, and public cries for increased scrutiny

Jusdt what exactly is it that a CEO does that he deserves to make more in one day than most of his employees do in a year?

[Darkdonnie]

What’s fair? If you don't like what they make do not invest. Do not buy their products. If they break the law put them in jail. Otherwise I like your ideas applied to teachers! Wow that would thin them out.

[RightWingMarine]

First I am absolutely against welfare of any kind whether it is for individuals or corporations.

That said unless you own stock in any of these countries, why do you care what their CEO is paid? If the stockholders don't believe the CEO contributes as much as he is paid they can have him replaced.

[iambusto]

i second that opinion. the only thing the govt should do is to improve corporate governance (ie give more power to shareholders).

1) no staggered boards. all board directors should be up for re election each year.
2) No poison pills, no greenmail provisions, no anti-takeover defenses. If a rival wants to takeover the company let the shareholders (and not the management and bod) decide.
3) all board members should be independent (especially the compensation committee).

that alone will do the trick.

[JScott]

Per the pic-Looks like despite all these advances in 'diversity' ,corporate America is still run by white males. (and some not very well at that)

[iambusto]

let the govt. hire people to fulfil artificial diversity quota. let the private business hire according to merits ok.

[PublicAdvocate]

Executive compensation listed here is not an accurrate measure of the total compensation but only the tip of the ice berg. There were actually hedge fund managers who made several billions in bonuses, stock options, and shares in 2007 according to Fortune magazine and the WSJ.

What has been demonstrated time and again is that CEO/CFO compensation without salary caps and federal regulation attracts thieves and rewards mismanagement and corruption more than excellence and efficiency. Dick Grasso, Dennis Kozlowski, Ken Lay, Michael Milken, Lee Raymond, Anthony Mozillo, Dr. William McGuire and scores of others demonstrated poor judgement and bad management skills, frequently diminishing share prices through short selling and back dating, and skimming shareholders earnings through CEO overcompensation. Some of managers even destroyed their business and offshored workers as a reward for overcompensation.
Home Depot, Anderson Accounting, Countrywide, Enron, Bearn Stearns and others are paradigms of profound waste, fraud, mismanagement, and have created a moral hazard for good businesses.
Business lobbyists have argued for over 40 years that low minimum wages w/o benefits creates more productive workers, more efficient business practices and a better overall business climate. If that's true, then the executives should also be constrained by that directive. $1 million yearly salary is far more than enough to find and retain talent without financial harm to the business or its shareholders.

[MarkInEugene]

Intelligent response...very interesting!

[layman]

These people are obscenely being paid too much; so that they can have more, more and more, just for the sake of have more excess at the expense of the rest of the population. The money going to them could have gone into more research and development, creating more jobs, jobs that do not exploit and abuse people, reduce the number of struggling people, people in pain, in society.

With the blessing of government policies, which are shaped and influenced by lobbyists' money, helping to destroy the environment, helping to move jobs overseas and awarding tax credits for doing so, helping to import more and more cheap labor, and outsourcing work to cheap labor countdries, leaving many Americans under-employed, unemployed or forced to work at the cheap as to boost profit margin as to have the rich to have more and to satisfy their greed.

In a society of Greed, wealth being amassed into the hands of just a few to extremity that the middle class is stressed out to the point of being vaporized, while congressmen and senators are being bought and sold to the highest bidder, rendering the peole they represent and supposed to serve powerless and in suffer.

That's what America has become.

[PublicAdvocate]

Good points. Probably the best way to restore integrity and a healthy business climate that rewards good business practices and talent is to institute salary caps on all executives ($1 million maximum yearly salary) and mandate federal regulations for perfomance standards from CEOs so that corporate abuses do not get rewarded. This will help by rewarding the good and responsible business leaders and their companies and will punish the bad apples who are ruining the economy and harming the general business climate.
Whomever becomes president: Ralph Nader, Barack Obama or John McCain must get a clear message from all of us that without strict regulation and salary caps, endemic corruption, mismanagement and executive overcompensation will only increase and harm our economy and world competitiveness as a sound place to invest money.

[UnbiasView]

"These people are obscenely being paid too much"

Who decides what is too much? Government?

If you are the only person that can do something really well which in turn benefits others, why should there be a cap on what you can make?

If someone wants to give Will Smith $75 million for 3 months of work, who am I to say he is overpaid if he makes the company $250 million,

[AmandaBC]

This is what foreign CEOs make (all in USD):

Hiroshi Okuda, Toyota Motor Co. - 903,000
Norio Wada, Nippon Tel & Tel - 382,000
Shigemitsu Miki, Mitsubishi Financial - 360,000
Wang Xiaochu, China Mobile HK - 227,000
Arun Sarin, Vodafone - 1,798,000
Kai-Uwe Ricke, Deutsche Telecom - 2,963,000
Thierry Breton, France Telecom - 1,521,000

Heck, even foreign oil companies don't pay the outrageous salaries American CEOs get:

Lord Browne of Madingley, BP - 5,356,000
Thierry Desmarest, Total - 2,720,000
Vittorio Mincato, ENI - 2,056,000

http://www.manifest.co.uk/news/2004/20040510Forbes.htm

The USofA: for corporations by corporations, anyone else is screwed!!

[MarkInEugene]

Compensation at this level requires the efforts of millions of people to sustain the lifestyles of these high maintenance elitists. These men live off the sacrifice and sweat of countless drones doing their bidding.

How anyone can think these guys are worthy of their salaries is just ridiculous!

[rockyersocksoff]

I have no problem with people making millions when they are successful. Create a company with real value, run a firm smartly and make a bunch for people, great.

But I have a HUGE problem with our system, when guys who guide giant fiirms, like Home Depot or Merrill-Lynch, to HUGE losses, and STILL reap tens of millions.

If the so-called Conservatives in our country, who prattle on about working hard and succeeding at something constructive being the God-Given key to riches, keep defending this ELITE CRONY SOCIALISM, they may find themselves out of power, in more ways than one.

[Swerinjer]

Nobody deserves that kind of money while people are starving. It's immoral. I say make a wealth ceiling law-no one person may earn more than $150,000 per year. And any stockpile of wealth over $1,000,000 goes to the government. Nobody needs to be a millionaire. And if they resist, then throw them in hard labor camps for hoarding.

[richardgordon]

What you suggest is just plain silliness. Its communism. What has made America great is capitalism. It is so successful a concept that even communist countries like Russia and China have thrown out their discredited ideas and adopted American style capitalism for themselves.

On the other hand what is also ridiculous is for guys like John Thain of Merrill Lynch to make 84 million when he and his executives have been responsible for creating billions of dollars of losses and driving the company into the ground. That is not capitalism, that is a distortion of capitalism called Republicanism. Like its poor ugly cousin (communism) Republicansim, is as corrupt distortion of capitalism which rewards incompetence, good connections and deceitful and greedy practices without consequence.

Democrats should not be the party that is anti-capitalist it should be anti Republican, which is more about greed and stupidity than taking well deserved profits from those who make them.

[tbrnotb]

Unbridled capitalism without restraints is as dangerous as any communistic system.

You really think these 10 guys are worth $600 million dollars?

That's just greed and avarice on a corporate scale. It's nice to know that the interest on my Amex card is going to pay this guy....

[cobobs]

In Germany, Japan etc, hardly bastions of communism, the gap between worker and CEO is never that stark. Our gap just keeps growing, and these guys generally do not deserve it, but they live in another galaxy and do not read Huffpo.

It is dangerous to proceed down this path, because it is the real class warfare and could cause unrest.

In our system, CEOs are rewarded for cutting fat ie throwing people of job and house and exporting the job overseas.

[Thorn2008]

I take exception to your comment that America is great. Great at what exactly? what are Americans doing that at least a half dozen other countries aren't currently doing better? In some cases such as health care more than two dozen countries are doing beter.

[smtemp]

Just for the record, John Thain was brought in to clean up the mismanagement that put Merrill in trouble - he wasn't in charge (or even an employee at Merrill) during the sub-prime debacle.

Overall -- I think being a CEO of a huge company is very hard, and a good CEO is probably worth (seeing wages as a kind of market price) every penny he/she is paid. The problem is that it is so hard to discern a good CEO from a lucky one... I'm not sure how to do that, but I'm pretty sure that price controls are not an auspicious way of going about it.

[OldKnute]

Exactly!!!! Richard,

Yeeeeee

What we have seen since 1994,,, Moral Majority,,, take over was a disconnect with reality. Tax laws changed so exploiters of the Capitol Markets could trade at will. No tax implications and little restraint. Principles of GOOD BUSINESS,, an even playing field, were thrown out with worries of too much Governmental restrictions.

The result was disastrous.

Capitol Gains was not a bad Tax. It was a safeguard against such greed driven abuses of the market. If I had my way,, after 5 years you would pay NO TAX. Before, 50% tax at two years, 30% or so at three years,, and so on.

What we have seen is LAWS manipulated to make quick riches possible, or RAPE,, of financials and by sub-prime opportunists, not long term investment in America.

TAXES are not bad,, they built America, out roads, our defense, our Educational system, Fire, Police, Safety systems.

TAXES are a Privilege NOT a burden.

The same roads that take product to market, distribute resources and goods, the same police that protect business, the teachers educate our work force.

The most UN-American thing that a politician can say,,, is he opposes TAXES. Either UN-American or ignorant of REALITY.

A fairer tax code yes, but to oppose all taxes is ludicrous.

Our Taxes BUILT America.

All the best

Knute Neo-LIB

[PlanetK27]

Remember that 58% of the people believe that these executives are, 78% right, 94% of the time.

Oh... and I think I can do 75% of the work for 10% of the any of these annual salaries.

And... I will provide my own health insurance plan.

[Phil123]

While the pay is absurd, at least these guys actually have a job.

A better question is how did the Clintons make over $100M since he left office? How did Al Gore make over $100M since he left office? How come there are many multimillionare senators? What, exactly did they do to become multimillionaires?

[bikerdude]

Write, speak, consult....Or marry rich broads who are willing to be the "other woman".
Or have daddy fund all your totally incompetent attempts at making a living on your own...

[rockyersocksoff]

Some of them, like the Honorables McCain and Kerry MARRY daffy broads who INHERITED it.

In other words,they did LESS than Clinton or Gore.

[OutsourcedAgain]

It'll be interesting to see how much the worst President in resent history makes after he leaves office.
As I recall Ronald Reagan got at least 2 million just for one speaking engagement in Japan.

[MarciaJ720]

These are all John McCain's kind of friends. How nice and how many little people helped them make so much?.

Oh, and this article is limited to CEO's of publicly run companies, not all people and their professions.

[swift goat pet for truth]

Of the execs on the list, the commodities guys benefited from a rise in prices they had nothing to do with. It is not like the made anything. They just got lucky.

The capital management guys just move money around. It is not like they contribute anything to the health of the society. Yes, they are clever in how they manage money, but they also do not make anything.

That leaves #1, 3 and 10.
At least Oracle makes something.
CBS is a huge media conglomerate, also provides a service. But I cannot say this guy is running the business very well.
The Gap, as I recall, is not doing all that well as a retailer, but they move a lot of money around, and it looks like the CEO is skimming.

[PublicAdvocate]

Additional point:
CBS as well as ABC and MSNBC are all enjoying the billion dollar benefits of use of the public airwaves for free without paying any compensation to the public for airtime use.
These companies are receiving the benefits of public welfare and are raking in billions through sports and private advertising. Instead of paying for the privelege to broadcast, they are pocketing the money and not providing sufficient public services to keep our nation well informed with detailed in depth journalism and thorough investigative reporting.
Just a few years back, when Sam Donaldson was asked about politicians having free/discounted access to tv to host debates, and reach voters with substantive dialogue, and discuss issues in detail, he grew irate that anyone dare ask for anything free from tv. We can and should expect a better attitude and a fair return on the billions in giveaways that continue to make private broadcasting media extremely powerful and wealthy in shaping public opinion.

[Rashnak]

Oprah made $250 million last year, why isn't she on this list?

Oh, it's because the criteria are carefully selected to exclude her.

How much did Kobe make? How about Tiger?

Tiger is going to be the first billionaire athelete and all he does it hit a little ball in a hole. Running a major corporation is a little more complicated than that- or perhaps it is not because if it were so simple everybody could hit a ball like Tiger.

Face it- not a single one of you have the skills to run a major corporation and you ll came here to read about how unfair it is that someone gets paid well for a skill you do not have.

Sour Grapes.

[GrainOSand]

I cannot speak for everyone but I do not have any problem with individual wealth. Nor am I trying to diminish the skill set required to run a company of people. It is not unfair the amount of money these people make in proportion to others, who without their contribution the CEO would fail, it is unseemly.

[guajiro]

Reminds me of an Indian saying that says a man heard about a legendary wise old man staying about in town. "What's so great about him" he told his wife. "I'll go see for myself", and off he went to see the old man himself. "I see nothing great or wise about you old man" said the man upon seeing the gentle old man. "As a matter of fact, I see nothing but a fool!" he told him. "What do you see when you look at me?" . "I see a good man" said the gentle old man. The man laughed derisively and then abruptly left. At his house his wife asked him how it went. He related the story to her and she yelled at him; "You fool, don't you know that how you see others is a reflection of yourself!!" " The old man saw good in you because he is good and sees good in the world. You, on the other hand, are bad and see badness in others. You have made a fool of y ourself." I'd like to hear more about your experience running a major corporation.

[dctackett]

CEOs... are Oprah, Kobe and Tiger CEOs?... didn't think so.

"Face it- not a single one of you have the skills to run a major corporation"
Face it-you don't have the skills to wipe your own butt...
what do these comment have in comment?... they are arguments from ignorance... so, in other words, you don't know what you are talking about.

[Rashnak]

Oprah is indeed CEO of her corporation.

and yes... she made $250 million last year.

[swift goat pet for truth]

Judging from results, I, in fact, do have the skills to run a major corporation.

I do NOT have the skills to run a major corporation SUCCESSFULLY.

[GrainOSand]

A fine, but no less important distinction.

[Bettysdad]

None of the people you mention are CEOs of publicly traded corporation.

Did you read the article?

[mjt218]

I think he's trying to make the point that CEO's have a skillset that is deemed valuable not unlike the skill sets which Kobe and Tiger are paid so well for. Not too many people in this world can successfully run large multi-national enterprises.

[AnthonyVolpe]

Larry Ellison makes $84,600,000 a year, swims in a swimming pool with a subwoofer in it, flies a fighter jet, and owns a $200 million mansion, and the man almost never has a smile on his face.

Pardon me if I'm not as bitter as some of you over his "accomplishments."

[drumz]

Ellison is just another greedy SOB. He is proof that money cannot make you happy.

[mexicanamerican1948]

do not blame it on money , blame it on he is just a unhappy person. Maybe half that amount would make me happy