The High-Paid Life or Decade of CEOs

Annual compensation for CEOs is nearly always a thorny question. Not so ironically, every CEO wants to land on Forbes’ “Billionaire List,” but mention of annual salaries for public companies brings a corporate chorus of no comments or quick stage lefts – helicopter waiting depending on the benefits package.

Via WSJ (including the graphic): Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of software maker Oracle Corp., topped the list of best-paid executives of public companies during the past decade, receiving $1.84 billion in compensation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of CEO pay. Coming in No. 2 on the compensation list was Barry Diller, who received roughly $1.14 billion from IAC/InterActive and Expedia.com, the online travel site IAC spun off in 2005, where he remains chairman. Following Mr. Diller [was] Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs with $749 million.

Over the past decade, Ellison has held strong in the face of  Diller and Jobs, who’s comp is mostly in his stock and does not include Pixar/Disney transaction gains. Steve Jobs still remains the largest individual shareholder of Disney, which sums up what a superb brand strategist he is: Apple, then Pixar leading into Disney.

The important takeaway item here is that in the top five, tech had three of the five spots with two of those digital awards (Diller and Jobs) being media-oriented. Hands down, Jobs wins for innovation, but Ellison’s acquisition growth and Diller’s deal structuring get points for ingenuity, too.

Back to the “salary thorn” metaphor, if you can produce returns for your company which you in fact founded – in the case here of all 3 tech CEOs – then perhaps you deserve the highest singular consideration. If growth is shared across your teams, revenues and market size, it’s a high-class problem that many shareholders should have very little problems with.