Survey Shows Top Ten American CEOs Earn Over US$100m

The 10 highest paid chief executive officers (CEOs) in the US all earn at least US$100m annually, with two earning in excess of US$1bn per year, according to GMI Ratings.

The independent research group has released its 2013 CEO Pay Survey, whose findings are based on an analysis of 2,259 North American publicly traded companies and includes over 2,250 CEOs whose tenure spanned the past two consecutive years.

Survey findings include:

• Pay increased 8.47% at the median across a matched sample of more than 2,200 North American CEOs.
• Standard & Poor’s (S&P 500) pay increased 19.65% at the median.
• Median realised compensation increases were far more prominent at larger companies. While the Russell 2000 saw a 7.62% increase at the median, the figure more than doubles to 15.74% in the Russell 1000.
• Median annual compensation increased far more in the Russell 2000 (4.13%) than in the Russell 1000 (1.80%) or the S&P 500 (0.29%).
• Industry segments experiencing the largest increases in CEO pay included construction materials; office electronics; personal products; hotels, restaurants and leisure; and household products industries.

“In the more than ten years that GMI has been publishing this report, I’ve never seen a top ten highest paid list that loomed this large,” said Greg Ruel, senior research analyst and author of the report.

“While the companies in this year’s list have performed well over the past three and five year periods in terms of shareholder return, generally speaking, it’s the sheer size and volume of equity awards granted to these top executives that catapults their total compensation to astronomical levels.”

Comments are closed.