The CEO aristocracy

WASHINGTON, DC: We’ve created a new economic aristocracy in America: CEOs. That’s a fair reading of recent corporate pay surveys. A study by compensation consultant Equilar for The New York Times finds that Charif Souki of Cheniere Energy was the highest-paid CEO in 2013 at $141.9 million. Oracle’s Larry Ellison clocked in at $78.4 million. But more interesting than these individual totals are typical amounts. In 2013, CEO pay for the top 200 companies averaged $20.7 million, consisting of $6.8 million in cash and the rest in stocks and options.

Any CEO of a major company is virtually guaranteed to become a multimillionaire. In the Equilar survey, the median holding of company stock was $83 million. CEO compensation has vastly outstripped average wage gains. In 1980, CEO compensation for the top 350 firms was roughly 30 times typical worker pay, estimates the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Now, that ratio is almost 300-to-1. (The peak was nearly 400-to-1 in 2000.)