by PATRICK MARTIN
Nineteen corporate executives raked in more than $100 million in income in 2013, and the median CEO pay for Standard & Poor’s 500 companies rose 13 percent to $10.5 million, according to an analysis of S&P data published Friday by USA Today.
The newspaper said these figures were at “a level buoyed by soaring stock prices that’s likely to rise as more companies meet annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing deadlines.” In other words, this report of gargantuan paydays for corporate bosses is likely an understatement.
The highest-paid CEO was Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who took in $3.3 billion from pay and stock options, on top of the $2.3 billion he made in 2012, when the social networking site first went public. Second place in Silicon Valley went to Lawrence Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., who took $229.8 million from direct compensation and stock options combined.
Joining Zuckerberg and Ellison were a half dozen Wall Street financial operators: Leon Black of the Apollo Global hedge fund collected $546 million, and his partners Josh Harris and Marc Rowan took in $397 million and $366 million respectively. Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group doubled his 2012 income to $465 million in 2013. The co-CEOs of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts were in the group: Henry Kravis made $161 million, George Roberts $165 million.
Others in the $100 million-plus club include John Martin of Gilead Sciences, $179.2 million; Howard Schultz of Starbucks, $163 million; Philippe Dauman of Viacom, $148.3 million; Eric Schmidt of Google, $147.5 million; Nolan Archibald of Stanley Black & Decker, $130 million; Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com, $128.4 million; Paul Bisaro of Actavis, a pharmaceutical firm, $119.2 million; Tom Dooley of Viacom, $117.8 million; David Zaslav of Discovery Communications, $118.6 million; Robert Iger of Walt Disney, $106.7 million; Jim Gallogly of petrochemical giant LyondellBasell, $106 million.
Topping every CEO except Zuckerberg in weekly earnings was Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus, who is pocketing $80 million in severance pay, bonuses and stock for six weeks of employment, culminating in the sale of the company to Comcast (See: Time Warner CEO to receive $80 million payout after six weeks of work).
By comparison, median annual wages for the 105 million people working full-time in the United States rose only 1.4 percent to $40,872. Wages stand significantly below the level reached at the time of the 2008 Wall Street crash, belying claims by the Obama administration and the corporate-controlled media that the US is experiencing an economic “recovery.”
The median worker would have to work 257 years to earn as much as the typical top 500 CEO made in 2013 alone. He or she would have to work 5,622 years to make as much as Oracle’s Ellison and nearly 2,000 years to make as much as Robert Marcus did in six weeks.
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