Wednesday, June 4, 2014

CEO Pay Season

Proxy filings for many major U.S. corporations occur in the spring, which means the top earning CEO list comes out. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, again heads the list, earning $78.4 million during 2013. However, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff may have been paid more by some measures. Benioff's 2013 pay of $31.3 million puts him as the 8th highest paid CEO, but Benioff's compensation was a staggering 57 percent of Salesforce's cash flow and over 12 percent of sales. And Facebook paid out 11 percent of sales and 20 percent of cash flow. By any measure, these pay packages seem to be an extraordinarily high percentage of sales and cash flow.