CEOs rake in big money even in downturn

PHOENIX, May 25 (UPI) -- Despite being hammered by a credit crunch and stock market losses, financial firms were able to pay their chief executives handsomely, documents show.

The Arizona Republic reported Sunday that corporate disclosure forms revealed 20 big financial services firms collectively paid $215 million in compensation to their chief executive officers last year.

For example, the head of residential lender Countrywide Financial earned nearly $11 million last year despite his company teetering near bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch's former CEO, E. Stanley O'Neal, retired with a $118 million termination package and $24.3 million in regular compensation despite a $7.8 billion loss for the firm in 2007.

Chief executives at large U.S. firms earned 364 times that of average workers last year, according to a study by United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies.

"CEO pay is always a flashpoint for shareholders anyway," said Shirley Westcott, a managing director at Proxy Governance, a corporate-governance research firm in Vienna, Va.

"In a down economy, when you see CEOs still making a lot of money when their companies aren't performing, it brings out more investor activism."