15 Most Overpaid CEOs of Public Companies: 2023

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CEO pay at S&P 500 companies is very high, and continues to rise year after year, according As You Sow’s annual report on the most overpaid chief executives.

The report says total pay of all 500 CEOs in this group amounts to $7.7 billion per year, of which $3.8 billion goes to the 100 executives on the report’s list of the most overpaid CEOs. HIP Investor calculates that this group receives more than $2 billion a year in excess pay.

The report finds the pay gap between CEO and median worker has also increased. Citing the AFL-CIO, it says chief executives of S&P 500 companies received 324 times that of their median-paid workers on average, up from 299 times in 2020 and 264 times in 2019.

The average pay of the S&P 500 CEOs in the report was $18.8 million, up 21% from 2021, while the average pay of the 100 most overpaid CEOs was $38.2 million, a 31% year-over-year increase. The report noted that median pay for the latter group, which is less influenced by the massive stock awards that inflate pay at the very top, was $23.5 million, representing an 8% increase over the previous year.

According to As You Sow — a nonprofit group that supports environmental, social and governance issues through shareholder advocacy — an increasing number of shareholders are objecting. The average vote against the CEO pay package at S&P 500 companies since 2017 has risen from 8.6% to 12.8% in 2022.

To identify the 100 most overpaid CEOs, As You Sow evaluated CEO pay at S&P 500 companies using data provided by Institutional Shareholder Services. HIP Investor provided further data and analysis to compute what the pay of the CEO would be, assuming such pay is related to cumulative total shareholder return over the previous five years, using a statistical regression model.

This provided a formula to calculate how much excess pay each CEO receives. As You Sow then added data that ranks companies by what percentage of company shares voted against the CEO pay package.

See the gallery for the 15 most overpaid CEOs whose pay packages were voted on in the year prior to June 30, 2022, according to As You Sow.

(Image: Shutterstock)

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