Wall Street CEO Pay Rises 20%

(Bloomberg) In October 2010, private-equity baron Henry Roberts Kravis, in one of the grandest gestures of his life, pledged $100 million to his alma mater, Columbia Business School, to help pay for the expansion of its upper Manhattan campus. His ability to throw that kind of cash around was helped by the start of trading of his buyout company, KKR & Co. (KKR), on the New York Stock Exchange three months earlier.

While the listing swelled Kravis’s personal wealth, it also exposed him to the rigors of the U.S. corporate reporting process. As a result, the world now knows that in 2011, Kravis was awarded $30 million in salary and other compensation by KKR’s board, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its July issue.

That makes him No. 1 in the Finance 50, the magazine’s annual ranking of the best-paid CEOs at the largest U.S.-based financial companies by market capitalization.

Kravis, 68, is followed in the ranking by George Roberts, his cousin and co-chief executive officer, who earned $29.9 million. The two men founded the firm with Jerome Kohlberg in 1976. The trio first worked together more than 40 years ago at Bear Stearns & Co. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-05/wall-street-ceo-pay-rises-20-with-kkr-s-kravis-no-1.html