While I’m still on lunch, and still browsing Fortune’s site, here’s an interesting article on the highest and lowest paid CEOs of the past year.
I will freely admit that I am not one who finds large amounts of money obscene, nor do I pretend to comprehend the mindset that does so; so the largest of these figures not only doesn’t alarm or offend me, I think it’s great.
What is more fascinating to me is the lowest paid CEOs — Apple’s Steve Jobs and Kinder Morgan Energy’s Richard Kinder both brought home a walloping $1. This a great idea for tax purposes, since earned income is taxed at a higher rate than any other income. Most likely they each had bonuses from stock options, or they may have both lived off other investments, hard to say.
Larry Ellison (Oracle) has them beat, though; a few years back (2001 or 2002, I think), he drew a salary of $0; however, he also redeemed an unprecedented $706 million dollars worth of stock options that year. Not a bad year after all.
