By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Alexis Leondis

Executive Compensation

Graef Crystal, a pioneer in compensation consulting, analyzed the 2009 pay of 271 chief executive officers for Bloomberg News. His findings? “Simply put,” Crystal says, “companies don’t pay for performance.”

Although there is no standard method for analyzing compensation, Crystal, 76, developed the formulas he uses over the course of 30 years advising companies on their pay practices. In an ideal world, Crystal and many investors agree, stock performance and CEO pay would be closely aligned. But Crystal discovered no relationship between shareholder returns and CEO compensation*. Here is a look at the 10 executives paid the most and the 10 paid the least. For the complete list, along with an explanation of the methodology used by Crystal, click here.

*All pay figures are in millions of dollars