Highest-Paid CEOs For 2008: AP's Top 10 List

The 10 highest-paid CEOs for 2008 at Standard & Poor's 500 companies based on calculations by The Associated Press. The analysis includes companies that filed proxy statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission between Jan. 1 and April 20. The total pay figures are rounded and are based on the AP's compensation formula, which adds up salary, perks, bonuses, preferential interest rates 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. Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy Corp., $112.5 million

2. Sanjay Jha, Motorola Inc., $104.4 million

3. Robert Iger, Walt Disney Co., $51.1 million

4. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $42.9 million

5. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co., $42.9 million

6. Vikram Pandit, Citigroup Inc., $38.2 million

7. Steven Farris, Apache Corp., $37.2 million

8. Louis Camilleri, Philip Morris International Inc., $36.9 million

9. Kevin Johnson, Juniper Networks Inc., $36.1 million

10. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co., $35.7 million

Comments

[old timer 37]

I was a CEO for 16 years of a hi-tech company. Kept my salary and bonuses to no more than 8x the lowest paid worker.

Executive compensation has little to do with competence or effort, it has to do with the quality of the Board and the degree to which the CEO controls that board... usually almost totally in large public corporations and banks. A CEO's decisions take at least 3 years to demonstrate their value, yet CEOs are paid primarily on last year's performance.

Executive compensation has become parasitic.... ready access to large pools of money induced people to come up with legal but destructive methods for wetting their beaks while using some of the corporations' funds to anesthetize their boards, their stockholders and the public at large. Bonuses have become a substitute for competent management; a substitute meant to buy loyalty rather than to inspire it.

The only difference between these CEOs and John Dillinger (who, when asked why he robbed banks replied "because that's where the money is") is that they've evolved a socially accepted way of draining money from banks and corporations. Until we face the fact that excessive pay weakens corporations, making them more vulnerable to competition and attracts incompetents to executive positions for a chance to make a killing.... we will continue to lose our ability to compete in a global market.

I have more on Executive Compensation on my blog at www.dismountingourtiger.com

[BroMan]

Thank you for a good, substantive read.

[AngieMom57]

Thanks.

[shep65]

Corporate America blames wages and benefits for their trouble making a profit. This article obviously exposes the truth. CEO's raid their corporations and blame the workers. At some point the American people are going to have had enough. Sooner is better than later as far as I am concerned.

[aaronr2000]

Hey. Where's Walmart in all of this?

[Davwbaird]

using china to make huge profits.

[SteveDenver]

And keeping their profits in offshore havens

[linzy]

Now, I wonder what kind of income tax they paid? After all, didn't the pretty little thing on CNBC noted "That's right. Isn't it your obligation in this country - there is a tax code for a reason, to take advantage of every bit of it you can and pay as little as you can."

Do these people do any good or create a positive benefit by amassing as much money and goods as they possibly can? Or is it strictly a "Greed is Good" way of life. (I love rhetorical questions!)

[z78pb45]

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which Reagan didn't write but championed (along with rich Democrats), was basically the opening door to, "ultra wealthy people don't need to pay a high tax rate like they have for the last 200 years". Bush/Clinton/Bush used it to create illusion economic bursts where the CEO superstar (what a joke) was born out of. For the first 205 years of America the tax burden (when there were taxes) was put on the ultra wealthy, not paycheck to paycheck population. Put back the 50%-70% tax bracket for mega wealthy and it would solve about 85% of the major domestic problems facing our country. The current system is set up so that those addicted to money are being enabled by Washington. Their addiction to personal wealth is poisoning the rest of the family no less than a booze/drug addict poisons his/her family keeping them down too. I blame politicians and "super" CEOs, no more. I blame the people for allowing it to STILL go on. Obama needs to start notching the tax rate up on mega wealthy people. There's no logical reason not to.

[Davwbaird]

as such thye are the kings and we the slaves.

[ibsteve2u]

That's why I quit going to things Disney. Every time I saw one of those Mickey Mouse toys that are everywhere (and I mean EVERYWHERE), and considered the wages and working conditions where they are made and then contrasted that with what I knew of Disney's executive salaries, it made me sick.

[OdysseusNemesis]

Reward for work is good, but mentally and physically, these CEO don't work any harder than most of their employees with similar academic qualifications and experiences. So why are their employees with similar output only earning peanuts? I contend that capitalism is modern slavery — just examine its roots; it is like the Mafia claiming to go legit.

[guajiro]

I think the solution to excessive CEO pay is to tie in the salary of hourly employees with that of the CEO's. Start off with an agreed upon ratio of CEO to hourly pay set by the average ratio of worldwide CEO's. For example, if on average CEO's around the world earn 47:1 more than their hourly employees, then we can set a U.S. CEO salary at 47 times higher than their hourly employee gets. If an employee is earning $10/hr, which translates to $20,800/yr, then the CEO gets $977,600/yr, or just under one million dollars/yr. If they get bonuses, then hourly employees get bonuses equal in percentage to what the CEO gets. Without labor capital is nothing.

[LeftRight]

I disagree. Rather than do that, repeal the Reagan tax cuts, and anyone making more than $3.2 million per year will find that amount taxed at around 70%! That will make them rethink getting paid more than $100 million per year, and cause them to leave that money in the company, which will then be able to pay people a living wage and STILL make a massive profit!

[Joethepauper]

For the CEO to raise his/her pay, they would have to lift all boats. I've always liked that idea. LeftRight's solution seems like it might encourage CEOs to leave the country, but so would this one. Good riddance! If I ran a company and one of my employees was demanding $38,000.00 per hour, I'd probably let him/her go and hire someone for much less. I'm not saying that I would be like this group and cheat my employees, but I draw the line at $1,000.00 per hour. Nobody needs or deserves more than that unless they have cured cancer or solved climate change. All they are doing is running a corporation. It's common sense, cost/benefit analysis, and a retarded monkey could do it in his sleep. Give me a business to run for a day, and I'll do it better for much less.

[CraziesAreRunningTheShow]

OINK, OINK, OINK, OINK.... and I am a true Capitalist.

This is obscene and possibly criminal when the shareholders are taken into consideration... which they never are.

[Oldchef]

The high-flying CEOs in Hong Kong make more in comparison to workers than any other country in the world except the US, approximately 41/1, but US CEOs make an average 475/1. This is an outrage and one of the reasons US companies are struggling in the world markets (besides universal health care). These same companies are spending millions of dollars to lobby against allowing their workers to join unions. These CEOs all went to the same schools, joined the same fraternities and serve on each other's boards of directors to scratch each others' backs and protect each others' salaries and benefits while workers suffer pay cuts, benefit cuts, and depleted pension funds. CEOs fire thousands of workers, tell shareholders they saved the company a fortune and promptly take most of it as a bonus, while the company suffers from not having enough actual workers to properly do the company's work. A good example is airlines, who have fired so many support personnel, they do a terrible job of serving their customers, while CEOs protect their own salaries and benefits.

[aaronr2000]

"CEOs fire thousands of workers, tell shareholders they saved the company a fortune and promptly take most of it as a bonus, while the company suffers from not having enough actual workers to properly do the company's work."

Good insight, but how can you reign this in? Shareholders and by extension corporations are a-moral in that they only care about numbers. If a shareholder can pull his money out of a company's stock sometimes automatically using a trigger in his portfolio software unless numerical expectations are met, then what incentive does a CEO has to not slash jobs, no matter how brutal and unconscionable it may be? Seriously, I need an answer, because this delimna leads only to cutting customer service, shortcutting on safety precautions, and firing sole breadwinners who have mortgages to pay and kids to put through college.

[drklassen]

Shareholders rarely get a say in executive compensation. The board does that---and fights tooth and nail any vote that would give shareholders more power.

[MBryant]

On the one hand -as others have said - like movie stars and sports figures - these executives are basically worth what the market will bear. That suggests a question though.. does the market really work for these people?

Years ago I remember Michael Eisner defending his salary by comparing himself to Ted Turner - both CEOs of large entertainment/media companies. The difference was that Ted Turner built TBS/CNN/etc.. from his dad's highway sign company to an internationally prominent media empire while Eisner was the salaryman who was currently CEO of Disney. (Disney built Disney, not Eisner).

Many of these CEOs are not enterpreneurs in that they've never risked anything to take the fruit they do - they've moved from Ivy league education to six figures salary to seven figure salary to eight. Even their stock options are protected with hedges and insider information.

Does the market drive this? who determines these salaries? In fact - they do. They all know that the higher they drive executive salaries in general, the more there will be for them... Executive salaries will continue to rise until stockholders take an interest in them..

[aaronr2000]

"Executive salaries will continue to rise until stockholders take an interest in them.."

Please clarify. I'm not sure what you meant by that.

[Furby]

Stockholders can sell their shares if they don't like how much money companies they hold pay their senior executives. They can also vote by proxy or in person against excessive executive pay. Problem is no one reads those pesky little proxy forms they get in the mail.

[Sandmanj]

Well, there's 10 companies whose stock I'll never buy.

[CraziesAreRunningTheShow]

Count me in also Sandmanj

[LeftRight]

I wouldn't be opposed to buying stock in them, and then trying to convince the other shareholders to vote against such massive pay packages. What I WON'T do, however, is buy products from them!

[Joethepauper]

By buying stock, you are funding their excess and greed. I hope you have tons of money to buy a lot of stock, because nobody is going to listen to a guy with the piddly amount of shares a normal person could possibly buy. If you have that kind of cash, you are one of them and went to the same schools and joined the same fraternities

[dfuller]

Leave these people alone.

They earn the ridiculous amount of money they make just like the people in the entertainment and sports industries who make thier millions.

[MikeDu]

Oh PLEASE. That's like Big Oil during the entirely manipulated 'energy crisis' last year pointing to Big Pharma as an example of 'reasonable' profits. Sanja Jha is not DavidBecham. Heck, even David Becham isn't "David Becham (registermark)"!
The boards of directors of these industries are legally looting their own companies. Motorola paying some guy *one hundred four million* dollars (one hundred lifetimes work for me) for one year's work is as much as stealing that money out of the investors' own pockets.

[atlantajoe]

What manipulated energy crisis. Many smart congresspeople in the house and senate held hearings to detemine if price gouging was going on and found nothing wrong. If Maxine waters can't find price gouging then their was no price gouging.

[FessorFrink]

I have less hatred for Dimon than the others. Over the years I worked there (until June 2008 - low level) he generally kept JPM Chase out of throwing too many eggs into a risk basket, but they were not immune, just less wrong. Though they did have a big part in Lehman's failure with Goldman Sachs. GS is the real manipulator of the whole fiasco with their government ties and links to AIG.

That is not to say we (the populace) we're not taken for a ride. Paulson made banks that we're not as bad off take funds so you could not focus on singular firms. So the banks had a huge backlash when we wanted some compensation limits. The removal of the mark to market rule was ridiculous. Just because a bank has assets in financial instruments that can't be priced, we have to pay for their bad decisions, by letting them price their own cra ppy asse ts.

Don't invest in what you can't unwind within three days. You take that risk, you get burned. Except in our situation, the Government was there with their extinguishers.

They way it looks, we are always going to be running a step behind Wall Street and that's the way they want it. I will be pleasantly surprised in BHO and TG get strong regulation on derivatives, hedge funds, and conglomerate banks this year. Hopeful, but not naive.

[Joethepauper]

Did you know about Lehman Bros stockpiling yellowcake uranium? That's another reason we need to keep a very close watch on these entities/CEOs. If you pay someone $38,000.00 per hour, they could buy a rather large private military and unleash it anywhere they want. Someone making $38,000.00 per hour could walk into a bar, and if someone looks at them wrong, they could just offer anyone $1,000.00 to punch the guy in the nose right there. For a greater amount, other things could be done with that person, but not by the money-holder. The wealthy person could get away with anything, and if his "handyman" does something too risky, another offer is made to take care of both problems. Same with female relations. The wealthy person could offer a staggering amount to someone else's wife or girlfriend just to display power. Furthermore, a wealthy person could travel the world buying slaves to tend to his/her yacht, and when he/she was no longer in need of the services, they could just throw them overboard. Are there evil people out there? Yes. Are there evil people out there with unlimited funds to do evil? Why do you think their sole purpose in life is to make more and more money? Some use it for good, some just collect it, and some use it for evil. We need to watch them much more closely.

[neoprimordial]

I think we should enjoy these times while we can, actually getting to see some of what our modern-day robber barons make. It's an alternate reality that they (and we) rarely wake up from, and the numbers have become an abstraction. $35 million, $100 million, $50 million.... They just add it to the rest and see where that leaves them on the Forbes list. They're divorced from reality.

[RenePA]

Absolutely insane.

Yet, heaven forbid that the evil - yes, I'm gonna say it, ready yourselves! - the evil UNIONS get their people decent wages, health care and retirement benefits... Oh dear, oh dear.. the economy and all of us will all go to the big He-double-LL when that happens!

Stop the evil unions! (and ignore that CEO behind the curtain).