Top Executives Who Got Raises or Reductions

By Rebecca Reisner

For corporations, springtime means filing time with the Securities & Exchange Commission, when the whole world finds out how much companies' CEOs got paid during the previous year. Perhaps more interesting is seeing how much the compensation has fallen or risen from the previous year. According to information services firm Equilar, the average overall compensation for S&P 500 CEOs dropped by 6.8% from 2007 to 2008; the bonus component of compensation dropped by 20.6%. On the following slides, in addition to the total tally of remuneration for CEOs, we've included a sampling of the amounts of the various components—base salary, bonuses, options, and preferred stock—of total compensation.

Note: All compensation amounts come from proxy filings.