IJ Reilly
Apr 25, 2005, 11:28 AM
"Mission Accomplished"
The rise, which excludes exercised stock options, comes as some firms tie compensation more closely to performance.
CEO pay is climbing again, rewarding top executives with the biggest gains many have seen since the stock market bubble of the 1990s.
The executives piloting U.S. companies pocketed substantially more in 2004 than in the previous two years. Those gains come even as more corporate boards — responding to sustained criticism about excessive pay — rethink the way they award compensation, trying to more closely tie chief executives' pay to performance.
CEO pay increased by an average of 12.6% last year, according to an analysis of nearly 180 corporate proxy statements by compensation consulting firm Pearl Meyer & Partners. That figure does not include the profits many CEOs reaped by exercising stock options.
The jump in pay takes the average CEO's compensation to $9.97 million, resuming a long-running rise in pay after two years of little movement.
But that overall figure pales in comparison with the pay netted by some individual CEOs. Directors at Merrill Lynch & Co. awarded chief E. Stanley O'Neal with $31.3 million worth of restricted stock. At Wells Fargo & Co., CEO Richard M. Kovacevich pocketed stock options valued by the company at $20.4 million on top of a $7.5-million bonus.
The surge in what for many CEOs were already huge pay packages contrasts sharply with an overall slowing in pay for rank-and-file workers. In the last year, the pay of the average U.S. worker rose by just 2.6%, an increase more than offset by inflation.
...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ceopay25apr25,1,456425.story
The rise, which excludes exercised stock options, comes as some firms tie compensation more closely to performance.
CEO pay is climbing again, rewarding top executives with the biggest gains many have seen since the stock market bubble of the 1990s.
The executives piloting U.S. companies pocketed substantially more in 2004 than in the previous two years. Those gains come even as more corporate boards — responding to sustained criticism about excessive pay — rethink the way they award compensation, trying to more closely tie chief executives' pay to performance.
CEO pay increased by an average of 12.6% last year, according to an analysis of nearly 180 corporate proxy statements by compensation consulting firm Pearl Meyer & Partners. That figure does not include the profits many CEOs reaped by exercising stock options.
The jump in pay takes the average CEO's compensation to $9.97 million, resuming a long-running rise in pay after two years of little movement.
But that overall figure pales in comparison with the pay netted by some individual CEOs. Directors at Merrill Lynch & Co. awarded chief E. Stanley O'Neal with $31.3 million worth of restricted stock. At Wells Fargo & Co., CEO Richard M. Kovacevich pocketed stock options valued by the company at $20.4 million on top of a $7.5-million bonus.
The surge in what for many CEOs were already huge pay packages contrasts sharply with an overall slowing in pay for rank-and-file workers. In the last year, the pay of the average U.S. worker rose by just 2.6%, an increase more than offset by inflation.
...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ceopay25apr25,1,456425.story
