14 Highest-Paid CEOs in Financial Services: WSJ

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In 2022, two-thirds of chief executives at S&P 500 companies received smaller pay packages at year-end than they had been awarded, at least on paper, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

This is because companies this year are calculating gains and losses in the stock awards that comprise much of top executives’ pay packages under a new measure that the Securities and Exchange Commission rules refer to as “compensation actually paid.” This is designed to “move disclosure beyond the moment-in-time snapshots that investors have considered for years,” the Journal explains.

Under the traditional approach — which is still in use, according to the Journal — companies value stock options and restricted stock as of the day of grants, frequently at least a year before it is disclosed and several years before it vests or becomes entirely the executive’s property. Last year, about 70% of chief executive compensation came in the form of stock or stock-option awards.

Now, companies are reporting changes in value over the course of the year, beginning with fiscal years ending in late December 2022. Some 140 CEOs earned more money than expected, and at 46 companies, the leaders ended with at least double what boards planned to pay them for the year, according to a Journal analysis of data from MyLogIQ.

The new measure also shows that traditional ranking of CEO pay changes with the incorporation of market returns. Under the traditional measure, the highest-paid executives were running tech giants, whereas under the compensation-actually-paid method, those names were eclipsed by several energy companies, which surged in 2022.

See the gallery for the 14 highest-paid chief executives in the banking and financial sector, according to The Wall Street Journal’s analysis.

(Image: Shutterstock)

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