New York - A new Associated Press calculation shows that compensation for America's top executives has skyrocketed into the stratospheric heights of pro athletes and movie stars: Half make more than $8.3m a year, and some make much, much more.
CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 that filed proxy information in the first half of this year received a combined $4.16bn in 2006, according to AP's formula.
The high cost of chief executive pay has drawn criticism in recent years as salaries rose, stock options paid off like lottery jackpots, and perks like chauffeured cars and private jets spread. Still, there are few signs of any investor backlash.
Yahoo's Terry Semel, whose internet company has lagged behind Google in profit growth and stock performance, led the pack with total compensation last year of $71.7m, according to the AP formula used to analyse those filings.
That is more than 2.6 times the $27m in total compensation this year for the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid player, and higher than the typical pay of such A-list movie stars as Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio - $20m, plus 20% of the gross box office take.
Semel was followed on the AP list by two energy industry CEOs, Bob Simpson of XTO Energy at $59.5m and Occidental Petroleum's Ray Irani at $52.8m.
Only 6 made less than $1m
The top 10 earners were in disparate industries, but they all had one thing in common: They were paid at least $30m each in 2006.
The Securities and Exchange Commission required companies starting this year to more completely disclose what they are paying their top executives. But the SEC's approach has been criticised for failing to provide useful figures for investors; the AP, in consultation with leading experts, came up with its own formula designed specifically to isolate the value of all compensation awarded to CEOs in the previous year.
Of the 386 companies in the AP list - those whose fiscal years ended after December 15, and who reported by June 1 under the new SEC rules - only six reported their CEOs made less than $1m last year.
The lowest paid was Costco Wholesale CEO James Sinegal, who made $411 688. But no need to shed tears for him: Sinegal also owns 2.4 million Costco shares, worth about $1.3bn, and has options to buy 1.2 million more shares.
This year's expanded disclosure requirements also offer a much more detailed look at perks given to top executives. They range from multimillion dollar tax payments on behalf of executives to much smaller amounts for household bills, including home alarm monitoring.
No more perks
A handful of companies, including Washington Mutual, have stopped offering perks, and pay consultants say many more are likely to do so as boards think twice about the repercussions of seeing their largess disclosed in proxies.
The AP formula, developed with advice from pay consultants Pearl Meyer & Partners and Mercer Human Resource Consulting, adds up salaries, bonuses, perks, above-market interest on pay that is set aside for later and whatcompanies estimated the present value to be of restricted stock and options awards on the day they were granted last year.
This differs from the summary compensation formula that the SEC requires companies to use in proxy statements. Some executive pay consultants say the SEC formula is of less value to investors because it includes expenses that companies recognise during the year for current and previously awarded stock grants.
That tends to overstate in some cases, and understate in others, the specific pay decisions boards of directors took during the year, they said.
No matter which formula you use, Yahoo CEO Semel's total illustrates one of the most pronounced recent trends in executive pay: Salary and cash bonuses account for only a small portion of total compensation. Almost all of his pay - $71.4m - came as stock grants and stock options, according to AP calculations. His salary totaled only $250 001.
Bosses earn 179X more than workers
Meanwhile, a recent report by the Congressional Research Service helps to put the executive pay issue into a real-world context. CEOs make, on average, 179 times as much as rank and file workers, double the 90-to-1 ratio in 1994, according to the agency's calculations.
If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as CEO pay since 1990, it would be worth $22.61 today, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Instead, the federal minimum wage will increase to $5.85 an hour on July 24, the first increase in a decade.
CEOs are also much richer than lower-level executives at their own companies. The Hay Group, a compensation consulting company, estimates that the average CEO makes 2.5 times more than the average executive in base pay.