In 2010, 2/3 of executives got cash bonuses up to 3 times what they received in 2009

Friday, May 6, 2011 14:51 ET
Crazy pay for CEOs is back
A new list of the highest-paid CEOs is out -- and huge compensation is back to pre-recession levels
By Natasha Lennard



Left to right, clockwise: Philippe Dauman, Richard Adkerson, Ray Irani, David Zaslav, Leslie Moonves

http://www.salon.com/news/economics/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/05/06/ceo_pay

Unemployment is now around double what it was in the pre-recession "Golden Age" of 2007; about one in seven Americans rely on food stamps; and the poverty rate is the highest it’s been since 1994. But as the AP reported on Friday, "CEOs at the nation's largest companies were paid better last year than they were in 2007."

Standard & Poor's released its list of the 500 highest-paid CEOs in 2010 on Friday. The AP analyzed the findings:

The typical pay package for the head of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500 was $9 million in 2010, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data provided by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm. That was 24 percent higher than a year earlier, reversing two years of declines.

Executives were showered with more pay of all types — salaries, bonuses, stock, options and perks. The biggest gains came in cash bonuses: Two-thirds of executives got a bigger one than they had in 2009, some more than three times as big.