A handful of chief executives take home a salary of US$1 a year or less. But all of them manage to make millions anyway, illustrating the point that if you're running the show, your salary doesn't mean much.
"Salary has become such a minuscule component of CEO [chief executive officer] compensation that it is now largely irrelevant," said Richard Finlay, founder of the Center for Corporate and Public Governance.
Of the 386 Standard and Poor's 500 chief executives whose companies reported under the Securities and Exchange Commission's expanded disclosure requirements this year, salary accounted for only 9.5 percent of total pay.
Included in the group with the smallest salaries was Terry Considine, chairman, president and chief executive of Apartment Investment and Management. He reported a salary of zero, although footnotes in the company's proxy statement show that he received stock options valued at US$600,000 as his base salary. Considine's total pay was calculated as US$4.8 million last year.
Richard Fairbank, president and chief executive of Capital One Financial Corp, also had zero salary, as well as no bonus. But he was awarded US$18 million in stock options.
James Rogers, president and chief executive of Duke Energy Corp, received no salary last year. But like Fairbank, he receives most of his compensation in stock and options. His total pay for last year was US$27.5 million.
Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google Inc, took home exactly US$1 in salary. Schmidt, along with Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, has refused to take anything more than a token paycheck for the past three years to promote an egalitarian spirit at the company.
But all three own handsome stock stakes in the company. Schmidt, 51, owns 10.7 million shares currently worth US$5.5 billion.
Another US$1-a-year chief executive is Apple Inc's Steve Jobs. But Jobs, 52, also owns more than 5.4 million Apple shares that are now worth more than US$660 million.
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