America's 10 Most Overpaid CEOs

[n2doc]

The CEO who got a 449% raise for keeping his company in the red, and more tales of executive excess.

— By Josh Harkinson

The recession is far from over for millions of Americans, but prosperity has returned to the nation's boardrooms and corner offices. After two years of declines in the wake of the financial crisis, executive pay is skyrocketing. CEOs at the country's 200 largest companies earned an average of 20 percent more last year than in 2009, according to recent corporate filings. By comparison, average pay for workers in the private sector rose just 2.1 percent last year—nearly the smallest increase in decades.

While some CEOs, such as Apple's Steve Jobs, took symbolic $1 salaries last year, many kept drawing outsized checks. Below, we list 10 of 2010's most egregiously overcompensated executives. They're selected not just on the size of their pay packages, but how much more they were paid than their peers at similar companies, as well as the disparity between their personal bottom line and their companies'. These 10 vividly illustrate what veteran compensation consultant Bud Crystal views as a broad problem in many boardrooms: "You have almost no relationship between pay and performance when it comes to the CEO."

Philippe Dauman, Viacom

Compensation: $84.5 million
Stock performance (change 2009-2010): +30%

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman's staggering $84.5 million take makes him the highest paid chief executive in the nation. After getting a 149 percent raise in 2010, his pay bested that of the fourth- and fifth-highest-earning CEOs combined—and that was only for nine months on the job (Viacom changed its fiscal year in 2010 to end in September). During that time, Dauman brought home an average of $312,963 a day. To be sure, Viacom, the gargantuan media conglomerate that runs Paramount Pictures, MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon, saw respectable growth last year. It defended Dauman's pay by arguing that $54.5 million of it was a one-time signing bonus tied to a six-and-a-half-year extension of his contract. Even if that bonus is averaged over that period, Dauman would still be, on a monthly basis, the highest paid CEO in America, overseeing a company whose stock price closed out the 2010 fiscal year down 12 percent from its 2007 high.

more

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/10-most-ridiculously-overpaid-ceos

[Angry Dragon]

1. PIG

[OhioChick]

2. Sickening n/t

[Initech]

3. I can't believe they narrowed it down to 10.

[Blue_Tires]

4. agreed...

[Kablooie]

5. Adobe stock went down 20% and the CEO still gets 12 million.

[Blue Owl]

6. Houston, we have a problem...

How do these fucks sleep at night?

[daggahead]

7. It's never enough, according to folks like this. n/t