Shareholder advocates use executive compensation-to-employee-compensation ratios to try to shame executives. Executives at rivals point to them to try to extract a bigger comp package from their boards. The executives themselves no doubt use them for bragging rights at the country club. And still others will quibble with the numbers, claiming they either do or don't reflect actual value delivered.
Yet we do love them so. The latest executive pay ratio, brought to us by Payscale.com, compares total exec comp at publicly held companies to the average take-home pay of employees.
After Payscale sliced and diced the numbers, it popped out a list of the Top 5 CEOs with the highest CEO-to-worker pay ratios. The full list can be found here.
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Would anyone have guessed that a drug store CEO would top the list?
Or that the CEO of a tire company once on life support would come in second?
Whatever the expectations, here is the Top 5:
1 CVS Caremark's Larry J. Merlo
Total cash compensation: $12,112,603
Typical worker pay: $28,700
Ratio: 422.04
2. Goodyear Tire & Rubber's Richard J. Kramer
Total cash compensation: $15,086,645
Typical worker pay: $46,700
Ratio: 323.05
3. Walt Disney Co.'s Robert A. Iger
Total cash compensation: $17,038,538
Typical worker pay: $60,300
Ratio: 282.56
Photo: Goodyear's Kramer.
4. Twenty-First Century Fox's Rupert Murdoch
Total cash compensation: $20,899,15
Typical worker pay: $77,900
Ratio: 268.28
5. Honeywell's David M. Cote
Total cash compensation: $16,560,958
Typical worker pay: $78,400
Ratio: 211.24
Payscale said it created its list from Equilar's "100 CEO Pay Study," an annual study of CEOs at the 100 largest U.S. publicly-traded companies. Payscale included salary, bonus, and "other" compensation to arrive at non-stock compensation.
Photo: Twenty-First Century's Murdoch.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
