Thursday, January 5, 2012

Why the CEO Gets Paid Differently


CEO pay is financial compensation received by an officer of a firm, often as a mixture of salary, bonuses, shares of stock, benefits, insurance, etc. The amount of pay is determined by the board of directors. For example, last year, AT&T’s CEO Edward Whitacre had a pay package worth more than $38 million. That included $9.2 million in salary and bonus, $4.7 million in long-term incentive payouts and $24.8 million worth of long-term incentive grants.  Llyod Blankfein of Goldman Sachs pulled in all package of compensation of $21.7 million in 2009 (source: MSN Money).There are some factors that made the compensation differently among the CEOs.

Sales Revenue
The CEO salary gets higher when the sales/revenue also higher. One boss in US company with annual sales $ 500 million get paid $ 2.16 million.

Type of Company/ Sector
Rates of executive compensation are also high within the financial, IT, telecommunication, oil and gas sectors.

Country
Rates of executive compensation are notably higher in Western than Asian countries and it is reasonable to conclude that high rate of executive compensation is primarily a Western phenomenon. In 2003, the Bank of China CEO demonstrates the more modest rates of executive pay of $ 229,720, while the Bank of America CEO got paid $ 9,959,080 (source: itcilo.org).

Gender
Based on survey of 3,242 US and Canadian-based companies in 2008, the female CEO pay packages are only about 85% of male total actual pay (which includes stock option profits and other realized equity) at the median: $1,746,000 compared to $2,049,000 (source:businessweek.com).

Government Control
China government put ‘caps’ upon level of executive pay in various instances. In February 2009, the Chinese Ministry of Finance put a limit upon the pay of executives at state institutions of 2.8 million Yuan ($410,000).

Rewarding Risk
Some argue it makes sense that U.S. CEOs have greater potential rewards, because they accept the risk of having a big chunk of their pay linked to options. The more risk the job, the more they get the compensation. 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Please feel free to comment