Managing August 14, 2009, 7:30PM EST

CEO Pay: Schwarzman Tops Corporate Library List

The rankings reveal that executive pay is still hitting new highs, and that some compensation isn't linked to performance

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Few issues have come under fire more in the past tumultuous year than CEO pay. The financial crisis and economic meltdown have given rise to copious new rules, regulations, and compensation practices, while plummeting stock prices have resulted in smaller packages for many top brass.

But some CEOs still walked away from 2008 with a massive chunk of change. In a prelude to its annual CEO pay study, governance research firm the Corporate Library on Aug. 13 released the names of the 10 highest paid CEOs. The list provides plenty of evidence that executive pay is still hitting new heights, and that some pay still isn't tied to performance. Several of the top 10 were paid bonuses either to simply stick around or that weren't explained by performance metrics. "There are discretionary bonuses all over the place," says Corporate Library senior research associate Paul Hodgson.

Unlike other executive pay studies, the Corporate Library's comprehensive report includes more than 3,300 public companies and is released after most corporate proxy reports have been filed. It also uses "total realized compensation," or a calculation of annual pay that includes the shares of restricted stock that were vested and the stock options that were exercised in the prior year.

Blackstone On Top

In a nutshell, says Hodgson, this is the best reflection of CEO income for the year, or "what they have to pay tax on," he says. (The tables in company proxies, meanwhile, use accounting figures that reflect what companies have to recognize on their balance sheets for paying out compensation. So the two figures are likely to differ.)

Topping the list is Blackstone Group (BX) CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman. But that dubious honor, admits Hodgson, is a fluke, in a way. Even though Schwarzman's 2008 "pay," by Hodgson's calculations, rang in at an eye-popping $702,440,573, that's largely due to Schwarzman having received a redistribution of his initial investment in the company.

As a founder of the private equity firm, Schwarzman's original investment is being paid back to him in four installments following the company's 2007 initial public offering. "You'd be hard-pressed to truly classify that as actual compensation," Hodgson admits, saying that Schwarzman's pay could end up as an asterisked note in future studies. Blackstone Public Affairs Managing Director Peter Rose agrees: "This is simply the vesting of his pre-existing ownership of the firm. His cash compensation in 2008 was a total of $350,000."

Energy Chiefs in Abundance

No. 2 on Hodgson's list is Oracle's (ORCL) founder, Lawrence Ellison, whose massive exercise of 36 million stock options netted him more than $543 million, with total pay nearing $557 million. Rounding out the top five were Occidental Petroleum's (OXY) Ray Irani, Hess Corp.'s (HES) John B. Hess, and Ultra Petroleum's (UPL) John B. Watford, all of whom each received compensation, by Hodgson's calcuations, of more than $115 million.