CEO Pay Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

CEO Pay - Essay Example The average CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company made $11.75 million in total compensation in 2005, according to a preliminary analysis by The Corporate Library. And that's just their annual take. At a time when most working families are looking at shrinking retirement nest eggs, many CEOs also have negotiated golden retirements for themselves3. The Top 6 companies noted to have offered the biggest compensation packages to their CEOs includes: Pfizer, Exxon Mobile, AT&T, IBM and Home Depot Inc, this is according to the recently published in AFL-CIO, America/s Union Movement. But how are CEOs being compensated We may ask. According to CNN/Money Staff writer Jake Ulick, these days, few corporate executives are doing the same despite a stretch of falling profits, rising job cuts and sinking stock prices. But a small dose of sobriety has emerged as companies reveal how they compensated their top executives last year. After enjoying a $17 million bonus in 2001 (Ulick. 2003), Sandy Weill, chief executive of Citigroup Inc. (C: Research, Estimates), took no bonus last year, when company shares fell 30.3 percent. The CEO of Eli Lilly (LLY: Research, Estimates), Sydney Taurel, earned a symbolic $1 salary in 2002 and was given options to buy 350,000 Lilly shares if they rise some 29 percent. The CEO of Oracle (ORCL: Research, Estimates), who took stock options but no salary and bonus last year (Ulick. 2003). Median executive compensation fell by 10.1 percent last year to $7.3 million, according to Equilar, which analyzed 161 proxies from Standard & Poor's 500 comp anies submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. But the figures from Equilar, a compensation research firm, also showed that median salaries plus bonus actually rose 3.7 percent to $1.56 million in 2002, after subtracting the value of stock option and restricted stock grants (Ulick. 2003). Thus shows how the executive are paid.Another survey concurred. The highest-paid U.S. executives received a 5.9 percent increase in total cash compensation last year, according to the Executive Compensation Index. The figures, from the Economic Research Institute, found that executive compensation grew faster than annual company revenue, which rose 0.89 percent in 2002 (Ulick. 2003). CEOs running 100 of the USA's biggest companies pulled in median 2002 compensation of $33.4 million, essentially unchanged from 2001, based on an exclusive database analysis by USA TODAY and the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a corporate-governance watchdog. Conclusions say that CEO salaries and bonuses surged 15% in a year salaries for rank-and-file workers averaged 3.2% gains; that Instead of stock options, many companies gave CEOs large blocks of restricted shares, less risky equity stakes. Among 36% of CEOs receiving them, the median value was $2.9 million; that More than 90% received fresh stock-option grants, with a median potential value of $23.2 million while nearly one-third pulled in compensation valued at $50 million or more. Even at companies where pay fell, pay packages remained large. PepsiCo CEO Steve Reinemund's pay package fell 62%, but was a still-impressive $76.5 million (Strauss & Hansen. 2003) Economists have determined that not only is there a strong statistical link between firm performance and executive compens