NEW YORK, June 9, 2007
It Pays (A Lot) To Be A CEO
Half Of America's Top Executives Make More Than $8.3M A Year
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Terry Semel, CEO and chairman of Yahoo!, Inc., led the CEO pack with total compensation last year of $71.7 million. (AP)
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In The Spotlight CEO Wealthmeter Chart the biggest winners and losers in the business world.
CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 that filed proxy information in the first half of this year received a combined $4.16 billion in 2006, according to AP's formula.
The high cost of chief executive pay has drawn criticism in recent years as salaries rose, stock options paid off like lottery jackpots, and perks like chauffeured cars and private jets spread. Still, there are few signs of any investor backlash.
Yahoo Inc.'s Terry Semel, whose Internet company has lagged behind Google Inc. in profit growth and stock performance, led the pack with total compensation last year of $71.7 million, according to the AP formula used to analyze those filings.
That's more than 2½ times the $27 million in total compensation this year for the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid player, and higher than the typical pay of such A-list movie stars as Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio — $20 million, plus 20 percent of the gross box office take.
Semel was followed on the AP list by two energy industry CEOs, Bob Simpson of XTO Energy Inc. at $59.5 million and Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s Ray R. Irani at $52.8 million.
The top 10 earners were in disparate industries, but they all had one thing in common: They were paid at least $30 million each in 2006.
The Securities and Exchange Commission required companies starting this year to more completely disclose what they're paying their top executives. But the SEC's approach has been criticized for failing to provide useful figures for investors; the AP, in consultation with leading experts, came up with its own formula designed specifically to isolate the value of all compensation awarded to CEOs in the previous year.
Of the 386 companies in the AP list — those whose fiscal years ended after Dec. 15, and who reported by June 1 under the new SEC rules — only six reported their CEOs made less than $1 million last year.
The lowest paid was Costco Wholesale Corp. CEO James Sinegal, who made $411,688. But no need to shed tears for him: Sinegal also owns 2.4 million Costco shares, worth about $1.3 billion, and has options to buy 1.2 million more shares.
This year's expanded disclosure requirements also offer a much more detailed look at perks given to top executives. They range from multimillion dollar tax payments on behalf of executives to much smaller amounts for household bills, including home alarm monitoring.
A handful of companies, including Washington Mutual Inc., have stopped offering perks, and pay consultants say many more are likely to do so as boards think twice about the repercussions of seeing their largess disclosed in proxies.
The AP formula, developed with advice from pay consultants Pearl Meyer & Partners and Mercer Human Resource Consulting, adds up salaries, bonuses, perks, above-market interest on pay that is set aside for later and what companies estimated the present value to be of restricted stock and options awards on the day they were granted last year.
This differs from the summary compensation formula that the SEC requires companies to use in proxy statements. Some executive pay consultants say the SEC formula is of less value to investors because it includes expenses that companies recognize during the year for current and previously awarded stock grants.
That tends to overstate in some cases, and understate in others, the specific pay decisions boards of directors took during the year, they said.
ELLEN SIMON
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The secrets of tennis legend 
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See all 33 CommentsBecause of this, I really don't understand why the CEO of Yahoo is getting a lot of money, if he is not doing correctly his job.
This amount of money can be given to CEOs of Google, Apple, and other companies that are really doing very good their job.
For example Steve Jobs is doing amazing work at apple, he is a man that really deserves to receive payments like this ones.
Why aren't there answers? It is NOT about retraining because other news articles are saying how it costs ____ less to do it in ____. They're avoiding the core problem: Cost of living in America, along with the wages, is why America is losing its competitive edge. If anybody is truly being serious about wanting to make America competitive in a global environment, then it's d@mningly obvious what has to be done: Equalize the costs. Until then, who is going to spend a large 5 figure loan (or more) for education to get a job that pays a smaller 5 figure income that would likely be offshored because it could be done in a cheaper country anyway?
Something isn't adding up. President Bush isn't responsible, but even he knows "retraining" isn't the solution. More and more types of jobs are seen as being able to be offshored. It hasn't happened yet but it's going to if the CORE problems don't get fixed. And that's what President Bush CAN do.
...in trade deficits
...in health care costs
...in job losses for both skilled and un-skilled laborers
...in energy costs
...and most of all, the long term health of this planet's environment that will have to be suffered by this generation's children, grand children, and beyond (for those who care, which is sadly too few).
The biggest oxymoron in the english language today:
FREE MARKET
This is perverted rhetoric. So how about free football games, no rules, let's watch the players literlly stab each other in the backs, spill some blood, spray bullets on the field to score a touchdown then. Hell let the sociopaths run amock because it is them who "win" in this "free" market society.
Jane, I wouldn't give a rat's azz how much they made if I knew they weren't raping a pillaging, gutting pension plans, hiring illegal labor, taking companies into bankruptcy to scr*w creditors, feeing consumers to death and union busting. They've not proven themselves to be fair to the American worker many of whom have built and whose families have built the very companies they're ravaging.
No, that's what happens in a de-regulated, profit at any cost, demoralized, illegal, govt. approved,greedy free for all.
The sad part is, the big fish can eat all the little ones. It then has to eat itself in the end after all the little ones are nothing left than disintegrated bones. It's not a very bright way to run a society, but nothing's perfect... Once big biz is done with us, and decades down the road when they take a leak on India's and China's populations as well, hopefully we'll be intergalactic so we can go offshore to Calufrax...
Oh gee, boo frigging hoo, at over a mil. a week I think they can handle it.
Fine, then they can take their stressed out azzes and their American worker backbreaking corps. and move tehm to India. S.c.r.e.w. them. We will fill the void with our own small businesses. F.them and F. people like you who care not about the avg. American.
And another reason why it's not competition: It's migration.
Indeed, for all the whining people make over Dell's bad product quality, Apple's awful India helpdesk support and numerous other examples, the jobs aren't coming back here where we (had) competent personnel.
Until America's local economy is globalized to match India's and China's, I just cannot believe we're competing with anybody. It's about greed.
One other thing - Michigan's cars. Is it solely the assembly that's awful? Or the PARTS? Where do the parts come from? China? I wish it was as simply as bashing the USA so readily. It isn't.
winnerindia - Gates was also arrested in 1977 for a charge that has since been "lost". Funny, that... And he's shrewd. In a business sense.
Screw you ***!!!!!!!
What?
Look at Detroit. They make shi**y cars. They charge too much. They have Unions that gouge their own workers and pass the high prices on to consumers that, in turn, say Bite Me, and buy Japanese. It is not the CEOs Pal, they don't operate in a vacuum. The CEO answers to a Board and too the shareholders. If you want to vent, vent on them. At least get the right target in your crosshairs.
If you don't like credit card fees then don't use the card. If you can't afford that big screen TV, that fishing boat and that new pick-up, hey, maybe you shouldn't buy it.
I doubt they'll rot in hell. Every day for these guys is hell. A million problems all day long. Have you ever heard the expression, "you couldn't pay me enough..."? Try managing even 5 people - what a nightmare. Especially 5 folks like you with an ax to grind.
Oh please, need I remind you that Bush has an MBA and is a former CEO, and we all know how his presidency has turned out.
No. No. Yes. Yes. Why?
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