Compare it to Apple’s Tim Cook at $348 million or WWP’s Martin Sorrell who didn’t get his $10.5 million or a lot of rich CEOs in between

How much is $348 million? (graphic: NYT)

Wow! And we thought times were tough.

Somewhere between the 99% and the 1% there was supposed to be a tempering of the ghastly amounts of money CEOs stuff in their pockets. But something funny happened on the way to reforms. Yes, some shareholders have gotten tougher on compensation packages, and some of these figures include “one-time payments” but most have absolutely no correlation to performance. It appears that CEO compensation still has no relevance to reality.

Last week there were a couple of articles in the New York Times worth a read: 1) C.E.O. Pay Is Rising Despite the Din by Nathaniel Popper; and 2) WPP Chief’s Pay Package Is Rejected by Shareholders by Julia Werdigier. And there is a list of the top 200 CEO compensation packages in public companies.

Near the bottom of the barrel is poor old Sir Martin Sorrell. He didn’t make the list because he had his $10.5 million proposed package rejected. At least he gets to keep his knighthood. Never could figure out how an ad guy could get knighted. Of course, if Conrad Black, a criminal, can keep his Lordship, I guess anything goes … if only in Britain. And get this. Sir Martin was pissed off despite the fact that he wanted a 60% increase while the company’s shares dropped 15%. I guess the higher up you go the greater the audacity for arrogance. Maybe Martin was looking up the food chain and saw far in the distant stratosphere Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook. He received … $348 million. That’s not a typo.

 

Here’s a smattering from the list to whet your appetite. Or make you want to throw up.

  • Tim Cook, Apple: $348 million
  • David E. Simon, Simon Property Group:$137 million
  • Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle: $77.6 million)
  • Leslie Moonves, CBS: $68.4 million
  • Ron Johnson, J.C. Penny (ex-Apple): $53 million
  • David M. Zaslav, Discovery Communications: $52.4 million
  • Rupert Murdoch, Fox: $29 million (despite the damage he’s done to devalue the corporation)
  • Rex Tillerson, Exxon, $25.2 million
  • Jamie Dimon, J.P. Morgan: $23 million (despite losing $4 billion +)
  • Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard: $16 million (while cutting 27,000 jobs)
  • Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft Foods: $15.7
  • Ted Solso, Cummins: $14.8
  • Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo, $14.1
  • Michael Roth, Interpublic: $13.0 (top public agency)
  • David King, Laboratory of America: $10.9 (this is the bottom of the list – believe it)

For the rest of the list – click. Read, weep and then put in for a raise.