i was curious on that one CC
Big Paychecks - Forbes.com
he chief executives of America's 500 biggest companies got a collective 38% pay raise last year, to $7.5 billion. That's an average $15.2 million apiece. Exercised stock options again account for the main component of pay, 48%. The average stock gain was $7.3 million.
The highest-paid boss of the 500 companies we tracked: Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) chief Steve Jobs. He drew a nominal $1 salary but realized $647 million from vested restricted stock last year.
The next four top-paid chief executives also earned most of their pay from exercised stock options: Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum (nyse: OXY - news - people ) ($322 million total pay), Barry Diller of IAC/Interactive Corp (nasdaq: IACI - news - people ) ($295 million), William P. Foley of Fidelity National Financial (nyse: FNF - news - people ) ($180 million), and Terry Semel of Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) ($174 million).