CEO Pay Rises Despite Sagging Economy

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. economy may have been slowing to a
crawl last year, but the nation's CEO's were doing alright.
An Associated Press analysis of compensation for the heads of
companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index finds their median pay
added up to nearly 8.4 million dollars. That's a gain of well over
a quarter million from 2006.
The pay increase came despite a deteriorating outlook for
workers and company shareholders. Collectively, the 10 best-paid
CEOs made more than half a billion dollars last year, though half
were leading companies whose profits shrank dramatically.
There are some signs companies are pulling back on executive
pay. Of the 316 companies in the AP survey that had the same CEO
two years running, about two-fifths lowered the total pay package
for their CEOs. However, falling stock prices were a primary
reason, cutting into the value of the shares included in pay
packages.