Every spring, top U.S. media outlets and business research organizations begin releasing compensation surveys that detail executive pay levels over the preceding year. These surveys seldom sample the same corporations — or measure pay the same way — and, consequently, almost always generate somewhat different results. This Executive Pay Scorecard compares the various reports released in 2011 on CEO pay for 2010. Our most current compilation [1] of annual executive pay reports covers the 2012 corporate fiscal year.
National Pay Reports |
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| Source | Methodology | Top Pay | Median/Avg | Increase | Worth Noting |
| Governance Metrics [2] (formerly The Corporate Library) December 15, 2011 |
Total realized compensation includes salary, bonus, perks, benefits, plus changes in pensions and deferred pay, value from exercised options and vesting of other equity, payments from vested retirement plans. | John Hammergren of McKeasson, largest pharmaceutical distributor in North America, $145.2 million | Median: $8.93 million | Median for S&P 500 companies: Up 36.5% Median for mid-cap companies: Up 40.2% |
The year’s top 10 CEO earners in 2010 together took home over $770 million. Three of the top ten come from the health care industry. |
| Forbes [3] April 25, 2011 |
Covers chief execs of the 500 biggest U.S. companies. Pay includes salary, bonus, and the value realized on exercised option and vested stock awards. | Stephen Hemsley, UnitedHealth Group, $102.01 million | Average: +$9 million | Average: +12% | For the year, Forbes tallies five CEOs who pocketed at least $49.5 million. |
| AFL-CIO PayWatch [4] April 19, 2011 |
Covers compensation at 299 major U.S. S & P 500 companies. Pay totals do not include the gains realized last year on options awarded in earlier years. | Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom, $84.5 million | Average: +$11.4 million | Average: +22.8% |
The combined pay of the 299 CEOs tracked in this survey could support 102,325 workers earning the median wage. |
| New York Times [5] April 10, 2011 |
Covers pay for 200 CEOs at firms with revenues over $7 billion that filed proxies by April 1. Pay includes salary, bonuses, grant date value of stock and stock option awards, and perks. Not included: payouts from stock awards from previous years. | Philippe Dauman, Viacom, $84.5 million | Median: $9.6 million | Median: +12% | Ranking third on this year’s list” Oracle software’s Larry Ellison. He pocketed $70.1 million. Ellison may soon not need any more incentive. He currently holds $26.3 billion in Oracle stock and other assets. |
| USA Today [6] April 1, 2011 |
Covers 158 Standard & Poor’s 500 index companies with the same CEO serving all of 2009 and 2010. Pay figures cover salary, cash bonuses, new stock awards, and perks, but not options awarded in previous years. | Philippe Dauman, Viacom, $84.5 million | Median: $9.0 million | Median: +27% | Average worker pay only increased 2.1 percent in 2010. Share prices for the S&P 500 jumped 12.8 percent in 2010. |
Regional Pay Reports |
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| Source | Methodology | Top Pay | Median/Avg | Increase | Worth Noting |
| Las Vegas Inc. [7] June 21, 2011 |
Covers over 100 Southern Nevada execs. Pay includes salary, bonus, nonequity comp, change in pension, options exercised, and stocks vested. | Michael Leven, Las Vegas Sands, $31.8 million | Average for top 10: $12.2 million | More than 40 exec in the Las Vegas area, the epicenter of the housing crash, received 2010 bonuses, ranging from $25,000 to $2 million. | |
| Washington Post [8] June 19, 2011 |
Covers chief exec pay at nearly 100 large publicly traded companies in the D.C. metro region. Pay includes salary, cash bonus, the grant-date value of stock and option awards, and benefits and perks, but not exercised stock options. | David Zaslav, Discovery Communications, $42.6 million | Median: $2.5 million | Median: +13.2% | Three defense CEOs — Northrop Grumman’s Wesley Bush ($22.1 mil), Lockheed Martin’s Bob Stevens ($19.1 mil), General Dynamic’s Jay Johnson ($13.8 mil) — ranked in the D.C. area’s 10 highest paid. |
| Hartford Business Journal [9] June 20, 2011 |
Covers the 25 highest-paid executives in Connecticut. Pay does not include the value of exercised options. | John Lundgren, Stanley Black and Decker, $32.7 million | The top three execs at Stanley Black and Decker pulled in $80.1 million for the 2010 fiscal year. | ||
| Charlotte Observer [10] June 20, 2011 |
Covers salary, bonuses, stock and option awards, interest on deferred compensation above market rates, and any perks or other compensation for CEOs at North Carolina’s 50 largest publicly held companies. | Martin Orlowsky, Lorillard Inc., $18.8 million | Median: $3.9 million | Median: +30% | Average North Carolina weekly earnings increased just 1 percent in 2010. In Mecklenburg County, the average rose 2.2 percent. |
| San Jose Mercury News [11] June 19, 2011 | Covers salaries, bonuses, stock grants, and option awards reported by the valley’s 145 biggest publicly traded companies. | Larry Ellison, Oracle, $70.1 million | Median: $2.8 million | Median: +37% | Silicon Valley execs in 2010 scored an overall pay increase 20 times larger than average Silicon Valley worker 1.6 percent hike. |
| Palm Beach Post [12] June 13, 2011 |
Covers 115 execs at 26 Palm Beach County, Florida companies. Pay includes salary, bonus, option gains, stock vestings, and perks, but not stock awarded during 2010. | Lewis Hay, NextEra Energy, $19.58 million | Median: $656,122 Average: $1.7 million |
Median: +23% Average: +40% |
The average pay for all Palm Beach County workers has increased only 3.6 percent in the past year. The average executive pay hike for the year rates as the highest the Palm Beach Post has ever recorded. |
| San Diego Union Tribune [13] June 11, 2011 |
Covers about 100 publicly traded San Diego companies. Pay includes salary, bonus, perks, exercised options, and vested restricted stock. | Gregory Lucier, Life Technologies, $33.7 million | Average: $1.8 million | Average: +21% | The average wage for payroll workers in San Diego County has increased 2.8 percent over the past year. |
| Buffalo News [14] June 7, 2011 |
Covers 52 Buffalo area top executives. | David Smith, National Fuel Gas Co., $7.1 million | Median: $962,781 | Median: +10% | A worker at Buffalo’s median income would have to work until 2039 to earn as much as the typical local CEO took home last year. |
| The Tennessean [15] May 31, 2011 |
Covers 20 top Tennessee CEOs. Pay includes value of stock and options on the day granted, but not exercised options. | Richard Bracken, HCA Holdings, $38 million | Average: $7 million | Average: +24% | The top three CEOs of this year’s list all came from the health care industry. They averaged $22.3 million. |
| Los Angeles Times [16] May 29, 2011 |
Covers California’s 100 biggest public companies as measured by revenue. Pay includes salary, cash bonus, the grant-date value of stock and option awards, and benefits and perks, but not exercised stock options. | Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum, $76 million | Average: $10.4 million, | Average: +23% | The 10 highest-paid California CEOs averaged $36.5 million. |
| Chicago Tribune [17] May 22, 2011 |
Covers top execs at the region’s 100 biggest publicly traded companies. Pay includes salary, bonus, stock options and awards, pensions, awards tied to a company’s performance, and other perks. | Adam Metz, General Growth Properties Inc., $49.7 million | Median: $5.2 million Average: $6.6 million |
Median: +43.6% Average: +24.5% |
The median CEO pay increase in 2010 more than doubled the 20.6 percent median pay hike in 2009. |
Economic Sector Pay Reports |
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| Source | Methodology | Top Pay | Median/Avg | Increase | Worth Noting |
| Banks Financial Times [18] June 14, 2011 |
Covers pay for the top 15 U.S. and European bank CEOs. Pay includes salary, cash bonuses, grant-date value of stock and option awards, and other benefits. | Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, $20.8 million | Average: $9.7 million | Average: +36% | Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein each made more than 15 times their 2009 earnings in 2010. |
| Real Estate FPL Associates [19] June 8, 2011 |
Covers executive compensation at the country’s top 100 publicly traded real estate companies. | Median: $3.4 million | Median: +26% | In 2010, pay at the top realty companies actually eclipsed the 2006 pre-recession real estate executive peak levels by 13 percent. | |
| Chief Financial Officers CFO.com [20] June 7, 2011 |
Covers 55 early proxy filers this year, all companies with annual revenues of $1 billion to $150 billion. | Median: +23% | CFO pay increases at the firms surveyed here actually outpaced CEO pay hikes. The median CEO pay increase: 18 percent. | ||
| Entertainment Los Angeles Times [21] May 29, 2011 |
Covers nation’s 30 top entertainment companies. Pay includes salary, cash bonus, the grant-date value of stock and option awards, and benefits and perks, but not exercised stock options. | Philippe Dauman, Viacom, $84.5 million | Average: $22.3 million | Viacom has three execs in the top five, Comcast two in the top ten. | |
| Financial Industry Bloomberg Markets Magazine [22] May 25, 2011 |
Covers the 50 best-paid CEOs at the largest U.S.-based financial companies by market capitalization. | Larry Fink, BlackRock Inc., $23.8 million | Average: $11.5 million | Average: 26% | Almost half of the 50 companies in the ranking, 24, received money from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. |
| Hedge Funds AR/Alpha [23] April 1, 2011 |
Survey covers the 25 top hedge fund managers. Pay includes “the managers’ shares of their firm’s performance and management fees, as well as gains on their own capital invested in their funds.” | John Paulson, Paulson & Company, $4.9 billion | Average, top 25: $882.8 million | Average, top 25: -12.6% | This year’s top 25 average comes in at the third-best ever, trailing only the record 2010 average and the tally for 2007, the last pre-Great Recession year. |