P

robably the most-heard complaint about big business these days, one seemingly tailored for the 99 per cent, is how much money corporate CEOs routinely pull down. Many ordinary Americans probably cheered when stockholders — that is, the people who actually own public companies — finally began to say, “Enough”. Yeah, well. Despite a lot of noise from shareholders and a few victories at big names like Citigroup and Hewlett-Packard, executive pay just keeps climbing.

Yes, some corporate boards seem to be listening to shareholders, particularly on contentious issues like the seven-figure cash bonuses that helped define hyperwealth during the boom. Since the bust, corporate America on the whole hasmoved to tie executive pay more closely to longterm performance by skewing executive paycheques more toward restricted stock, which can’t be sold for years.

But rewards at the top are still rich— and getting richer. Now that 2011 proxy statements have been filed, the extent of executive pay last year has finally become clear. Median pay of the nation’s 200 top-paid CEOs was $14.5 million (Dh53 million), according to a study conducted for the

by Equilar, a compensation data firm based in Redwood City, Californian. The median pay raise among those CEOs was 5 per cent.

That 5 per cent raise is smaller than last year’s. But it comes at a time of stubbornly high unemployment and declining wealth for many ordinary Americans.

“The bigger issues are there, still to be worked on, and those are themore difficult ones,” says Eleanor Bloxham, the chief executive of the Value Alliance, a firminWesterville, Ohio, that consults on corporate pay. Corporations are changing pay practices, Bloxhamsays, but not enough: “There is toomuch hype and too little substance.”

The latest list of themost richly rewarded executives expands on a preliminary survey Equilar put together for in April, before many companies had submitted final regulatory filings for 2011. While the earlier study showed the median pay package rising 2 per cent from 2010 to 2011, the final figures put the increase at 5 per cent.

The list has many familiar names, like Lawrence J. Ellison ofOracle ($77.6 million) and Leslie Moonves of CBS ($68.4 million). But a number of executives from smaller companies also landed near the top. Discovery Communications had about a 10th the revenue of Oracle last year but gave its CEO, David M. Zaslav, $52.4 million, the sixth-largest pay package in corporate America, according to Equilar.

Because the list includes only the CEOs of public companies, it does not capture the many billions that have been earned by top hedge fund managers and private-equity dealmakers in recent years. But even in the more narrow universe of public companies, the complete Equilar study shows that there was not one, but two executives who had nine-figure paydays last year— the first time that has ever happened, according to Aaron Boyd, Equilar’s head of research.

Exclusive club

David E. Simon, the top executive at the Simon Property Group, was the secondhighestCEO last year, with $137 million. He joined the exclusive nine-figure niche occupied by Timothy D. Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs at Apple. Cook received a package valued at $378 million. The pay of both Simon and Cook were bolstered by one-time rewards that the companies said would not be repeated and that are tied to future company performance.

In Simon’s case, this was a stock package that will be distributed over eight years that was worth $132 million when granted last year. Like Cook’s bonus, it has already gained substantially in value.

While Apple shareholders overwhelmingly approved Cook’s compensation, Simon Property investors lopsidedly rejected Simon’s pay package.

The fact that there were votes at both companies shows the new power that investors have seized. Despite opposition from corporate America, the Dodd-Frank legislation mandated that public companies give shareholders a vote on compensation strategy at least once every six years. Last year brought the first onslaught of such say-on-pay votes, and this year 1,714 companies have already held them, says the consulting firm Semler Brossy. Among those, 45 companies’ pay strategies have been rejected by shareholders, up from 29 last year at this time.

To address criticism that CEO pay has become untethered from company performance, companies have been giving more bonuses in restricted stock that can be sold only if an executive manages to increase revenue or the stock price. An Equilar survey of all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shows that the median amount of stock awarded to CEOs rose 10.7 per cent from 2010 to 2011, while cash awards fell 6.8 per cent.

Ira T. Kay, a managing partner at the consulting firm Pay Governance, said companies had set “hard goals” for executives that explained why they “are somotivated to run these companies very well”. He gives these pay packages some credit for the performance of American corporations.

Still, the votes against the pay packages at companies like Simon Property also underline some of the hollowness of the shareholder initiatives.

CharlesM. Elson, director of theWeinberg Centre for Corporate Governance at theUniversity of Delaware, said the additions are intended to ensure that executives stay put.

But Elson said that the fears of chief executives jumping ship were misplaced, while the steady rise in executive pay had damaged corporate morale, causing employees to ask, “Why should I kill myself to get a 2 per cent raise if the CEO is going to get a 20 per cent raise?”

Equilar used a different method than it had in past years to compile its list of CEO pay for focusing on the top-paid executives at all public companies, rather than just those at the 200 largest ones. This change revealed that many of the highestpaid executives were at smaller companies.

The smallest company, by revenue, on the new list is Akamai Technologies, with sales last year of $1.1 billion — or 0.2 per cent of sales at the largest, ExxonMobil. While Exxon paid its CEO, Rex Tillerson, $25.2 million, Akamai paid its chief, Paul Sagan, $11.9 million. Nearly all of it was in stock awards and options, but it faced opposition by Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises investors.

Akamai fought back, writing a letter arguing that the big award was necessary to persuade Sagan to stay on after he had indicated a desire to retire. Some 52 per cent of the company’s shareholders ended up supporting the pay package.

Kay, at Pay Governance, said critics of current CEO pay underestimate the willingness of executives to leave. “Could you pay them a little less?” he asked. “I think you could.” But he added: “You are dealing with boardmembers that don’t want to lose their CEO, and they buy insurance by paying at the industry standard.”