The Apple Core

Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern

Steve Jobs tops list of CEO overachievers

By | August 18, 2010, 12:59am PDT

Which Fortune 100 CEOs led their companies to outperform the S&P 500 last year — and collected the lowest pay for their efforts? CNNMoney has posted its list of 15 top CEO overachievers — those who had stocks rise and collected the lowest pay in the industry.

Steve Jobs tops the list with his $1 salary.

1. Steve Jobs, $1
Total pay: $1
Company: Apple
AAPL stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 09/09): 63% vs. -9.2%

2. Lloyd C. Blankfein, $862,657
Total pay: $862,657
Company: Goldman Sachs Group
GS stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 102% vs. 23.5%

3. John J. Mack*, $939,241
Total pay: $939,241
Company: Morgan Stanley
MS stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 87% vs. 23.5%

4. Michael Dell, $963,623
Total pay: $963,623
Company: Dell
DELL stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 01/10): 36% vs. 32.0%

5. James Dimon, $1.3 million
Total pay: $1.3 million
Company: JPMorgan Chase
JPM stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 34% vs. 23.5%

6. Steven A. Ballmer, $1.3 million
Total pay: $1.3 million
Company: Microsoft
MSFT stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 06/09): -12% vs. -28.2%

7. W. Bruce Johnson*, $1.5 million
Total pay: $1.5 million
Company: Sears Holdings
SHLDstock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 01/10): 128% vs. 32.0%

8. Jeffrey P. Bezos, $1.8 million
Total pay: $1.8 million
Company: Amazon.com
AMZN stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 162% vs. 23.5%

9. Mary F. Sammons*, $2.5 million
Total pay: $2.5 million
Company: Rite Aid
RAD stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 02/10): 443% vs. 59.2%

10. Ralph S. Cunningham, $3.1 million
Total pay: $3.1 million
Company: Enterprise GP Holdings
EPE stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 135% vs. 23.5%

11. R. David Yost, $5.5 million
Total pay: $5.5 million
Company: AmerisourceBergen
ABC stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 09/09): 20% vs. -9.2%

12. James W. Owens*, $6.8 million
Total pay: $6.8 million
Company: Caterpillar
CAT stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 31% vs. 23.5%

13. Gregory M.E. Spierkel, $7.9 million
Total pay: $7.9 million
Company: Ingram Micro
IM stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 30% vs. 23.5%

14. Francis S. Blake, $9.9 million
Total pay: $9.9 million
Company: Home Depot
HD stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 01/10): 34% vs. 32.0%

15. George Paz, $10.6 million
Total pay: $10.6 million
Company: Express Scripts
ESRX stock outperformed S&P 500
(1 yr., through 12/09): 57% vs. 23.5%

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Topics

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

Disclosure

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady is the creator and editor of O'Grady's PowerPage, which has been publishing mobile technology news since 1995. He maintains an advertising relationship with the following legacy advertisers on the PowerPage:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Adsense
  • Tekserve
  • Advertising on the PowerPage is brokered by a third-party agency (BackBeat Media) and he recuses himself from these negotiations.

Biography

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady developed an affinity for Apple computers after using the original Lisa, and this affinity turned into a bona-fide obsession when he got the original 128 KB Macintosh in 1984.

He started writing one of the first Web sites about Apple (O'Grady's PowerPage) in 1995 and is considered to be one of the fathers of blogging. He has been a frequent speaker at the Macworld Expo conference and a member of the conference faculty. He also co-founded the first dedicated PowerBook User Group (PPUG) in the United States.

After winning a major legal battle with Apple in 2006, he set the precedent that independent journalists are entitled to the same protections under the First Amendment as members of the mainstream media.

O'Grady is the author of The Nexus One Pocket Guide, The Droid Pocket Guide, The Google Phone Pocket Guide, and The Garmin nuvi Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press), the author of Corporations That Changed the World: Apple Inc. (Greenwood Press), and a contributor to The Mac Bible (Peachpit Press). In addition, he has contributed to numerous Mac publications over the years, including MacWEEK, Macworld, and MacPower (Japan).

When he's not writing about Apple for ZDNet at The Apple Core, he enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

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RE: Steve Jobs tops list of CEO overachievers
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
This could be fairly stimulating give great benefits you may have authored for us. Most people ought to realize mulberry bags that these factors can transpire to essentially virtually anyone. You are likely to have observed to me an enhanced outlook now.
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What world do we live in...
jasonp@... 18th Aug 2010
when losing less than projected qualifies for overachieving? There's only one guy on the list with a negative actual, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out who I'm talking about.
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Welcome to the new LCD metaphysics
klumper Updated - 20th Aug 2010
@jasonp
What world do we live in.. when losing less than projected qualifies for overachieving?

Where we're reminded that up is actually down and black trumps white at every turn. Throw in "political correctness" and you have a royal flush.
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RE: Steve Jobs tops list of CEO overachievers
Loverock Davidson 18th Aug 2010
I have a higher salary than you do Steve Jobs, in your face!
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@Loverock Davidson

And what have you done lately?
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@Loverock Davidson

I think almost everybody on the planet earns more than Mr Jobs.

Clearly this shows how right the claims that Mr Jobs wants all your money are!!!

You and your fellow hate bloggers are so, so right, yet again!!!

/sarcasm

I have seen that accusation made many, many times by hate bloggers. I didn't make that up.
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So the top four on this list make LESS than a million bucks a year... maybe LOWERING CEO salaries is the way to make a success of your overachieving!
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Or maybe
use_what_works_4_U 20th Aug 2010
@fotostuf
Perhaps it shows the difference between those who work for the love of what they do and those who work for the love of what they get.
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@fotostuf

The reason some choose to get paid only a $1 is because they own a huge chunk of stock. They do this because the money they make on their stock options don't get taxed anywhere near what they would be taxed if they earnings were their salaries.

In Steve Jobs case he has over 7.5 million shares of Apple Stock to his name. He is worth ~5.5 Billion dollars.
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Mr. Jobs is unique in the corporate world. He actually knows about what he captains and has turned a nascent idea thirty years ago with some of his buddies into what all of us use daily. People say, oh, Jobs was not the computer brains behind Apple and Mac and so forth. There are many with those talents and what we end up with are ugly clunky and disagreeable products designed by geeks and manufactured by engineers alone. Apple is the only company I can think of that is run really by an artist/dreamer/social interpreter and as such he has gotten those with their particular talents to work in unison to make products that have ultimately changed our society. Without his leading Apple once again, the company was doomed as it had been ousted from his hands by morons and run into the ground by men with utterly no vision for what Apple could do. There is no turning back for that company with or without Mr. Jobs at the helm and I suspect that whether or not the dinosaurs of the business world will ever accept this wonderful and stable computer products line onto their desk or not, Apple will be in the pockets and couches and tables of the world that counts today...The Rest of US and there are lot of "US." To me it is inexplicable that business has stuck with archaic and unsafe systems rather than moving to Mac OSX or the iPHONE but considering how miserable businesses are run much of the time and have dragged down the world's economy in being Luddite and conservative, one ought not be surprised at this outcome. The single greatest American revolution is Apple and only the popular press sees this. With the terrible collapse of America's economic power one can only wonder why its winners such as Apple are not given the keys to the store to turn the entire nation around instead of to the imbeciles who are still tied to glories past. The future is not GM or the Industrial Military Complex but rather the fleet footed brilliant products that ONLY the West can provide. It is not the hardware..it is the mindset that makes Apple what it is and Jobs has turned a dying company back onto the incredible dynamic that it is today. They are guided by the starship Jobs. Good for him and good for us all.
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@nfiertel

Ok. We get it. Jobs is god, IYO.

Forgive the rest of us for believing someone/something else fulfills that role in the universe.
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@Dr. John

Yep - and that probably includes Excel, and Word - which both are heavily based on the input of Mr Jobs and his vision.

So quite frankly unless your alternative is a command line spreadsheet and a non GUI, non WYSIWYG word processor you are in fact choosing between Mr Jobs Vision watered down, and Mr Jobs vision less watered down.

Are you prepared to use an OS not based on Mac OS?

Are you prepared to use a word processor or spreadsheet that did not come out of the Macintosh project, or is based on one that did?

If so then you can make your claim of difference - in reality you rely on his vision and his badgering of development teams to make a product 'insanely great'.
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What obscene salaries CEOs get!
Laraine Anne Barker 18th Aug 2010
How can anyone be worth these salaries?
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Obviously Steve Jobs
Ken_z 18th Aug 2010
@Laraine Anne Barker

Is well worth his $1 a year salary. happy

In other companies the value may be less, but these companies generally pay a competitive rate in order to keep their best execs.

And to be blunt, Apple could pay Jobs $100 Million a year and he would still be more than worth it because of the increases in the company's value quarter after quarter.
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@Laraine Anne Barker
Most of them are not. They're just a bunch of overpaid pricks that fire their employees while they increase their own bonuses even as their companies share prices drop. Even when they get canned, they're given even more money as compensation for a job poorly done.
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@ConstableOdo

Yep - and they don't even have the hate brigade working on them every day.

Earn $1 a year and get people making claims you are a greedy megalomaniac.

Earn $10 Million a year and get left alone.

Makes sense.

Hate bloggers: why not find the real problems of the world and attack them.
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RE: Steve Jobs tops list of CEO overachievers
Galdang Updated - 18th Aug 2010
maybe the increase in stock value compensates his 1$ salary a tiny bit?
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@Galdang

Of course it does. But it also means his net worth is intimately tied to the success of his company.

That's not such a bad thing for a CEO.
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They should pay Ballmer in food stamps.
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@trm1945

That wouldn't help - it is not tied to success.

Actually tying everything to stock price is not ultimately the right thing either.

Raising stock prices is not the same thing as improving the company or the world.

Of course this applies to Galdang's comment as well.

You could make a fortune out of trading in stocks in either Google, MS or Apple, and the price falls help with that.

The market often does not price companies correctly, and they certainly do not do a good job of working out the long term future.
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I agree with nfertel's commentary. If Jobs hadn't had the vision of how we interact with computers and executed it in the Mac we'd all be on green screens typing DOS commands to this day. His vision was the fire that fed Gates & Co. To give Gates credit he saw what Jobs was doing and, using his scam with IBM, interpreted it to a broader audience than Apple could. Jobs has created a corporate culture that will extend well beyond his personal stewardship. Gates left Ballmer, nuff said on legacies.
As for the $1 pay, well, that's nice, but don't cry for the single largest shareholder in Disney and a pretty good slice of Apple. I'm sure his dividend checks are slightly higher than a buck.
Kudos to Jobs. We've all benefited from his visions. He has indeed 'made a dent in the universe.'
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@dheady@...

Gates didn't just see what Jobs was doing. MS was invited to develop Word and Excel for the Mac before it was released so they would have products for the Mac at launch time.

Word & Excel are in fact largely the vision of the Mac team at Apple.
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Overpaid under performers
kennmsr Updated - 19th Aug 2010
IMHO CEOs should all be paid under 6 figures (for all you non accountants that's less than 1 Million) and then rewarded handsomely in stock options, to mature in two plus years. That's incentive pay, if you make the company succeed then you are rewarded down the pike if not you have kindling to start a fire on a cold night. If you think CEOs are making a killing look at the board of directors many of the old boys club voting raises for their cronies who are on their corporate boards and all making close to $100K. More than most Americans who work 40 hr weeks. It's also interesting to watch these Directors who get paid in Stock the day the receive the option they run right to the bank and cash it in not even waiting for a market up day. Corporate America is like American education if you throw money at it, it will get better. All this is done at the expense of the working middle class.
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You mean less than seven figures.
steve_jonesuk@... 19th Aug 2010
@kennmsr
There are seven figures in 1 Million. Also, I agree.
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@steve_jonesuk@...
The intent was to max CEOs out at $999K. I guess I didn't state it clear enough but thanks for the agreement.
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as opposed to this annual "salary" masquerade, you'd see what an overpaid bunch of moneybags these golden princes are.
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RE: Steve Jobs tops list of CEO overachievers
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
This could be fairly stimulating give great benefits you may have authored for us. Most people ought to realize mulberry bags that these factors can transpire to essentially virtually anyone. You are likely to have observed to me an enhanced outlook now.

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