These men are the ten best paid CEOs in the U.S.:
1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook – total compensation $2.27bn
The social network king received a base salary of $503,205 in 2012 and $1.2m in perks, including use of the company aircraft and security. But it was the sale of Facebook that made him his fortune. Zuckerberg profited nearly $2.3bn on his share options when the company went public.
2. Richard Kinder, Kinder Morgan – $1.16bn
The billionaire energy executive received $1 in wages in 2012 and more than $1.1bn in restricted stock profits. Kinder Morgan's share price has been falling this year on reports that the company has minimised pipeline repairs in order to maximise returns to shareholders – a characterization the company disputes.
3. Mel Karmazin, Sirius XM Radio - $255.3m
The veteran radio executive stepped down from running Sirius last December, and received a $9.5m bonus. His was the largest bonus in the top 10. But, again, it was his share options that handed him most of his compensation – 120m of them worth more than $244m.
4. Gregory Maffei, Liberty Media – $254.8m
Strike one for Maffei, who appears twice in this list. The Liberty Media boss received a salary of $875,109, a $2.23m cash bonus and $252,323 in perks. He profited more than $250m on the exercise of 3.1m options at Liberty Media Corporation in 2012, a little over half the grant of the nearly 6m options he received in 2009.
5. Tim Cook, Apple – $143.8m
Cook made nearly $140m in restricted stock profits in 2012 on grants that date back to 2008 and 2010, before he took over as CEO. In August 2011, when he took over from Steve Jobs, Cook was granted 1m restricted stock units that start paying out in 2016.
6. Edward Stack, Dick's Sporting Goods – $142m
In his 29th year as CEO Stack exercised nearly 4m share options for a profit of more than $137m.
7. Gregory Maffei, Liberty Interactive – $136.4m
With his Interactive hat on, Maffei exercised an additional 12.3m options for a profit of more than $132m. Added together his take from the two Liberty companies comes to more than $391m, third place overall.
8. Howard Schultz, Starbucks – $117.5m
The coffee king made more than $103m on the exercise of 2.8m options in 2012 – the rest was salary, bonus and perks. Schultz has made $191.5m in combined stock option profits over the past four years.
9. Marc Benioff, salesforce.com – $109.5m
The cloud computing company billionaire made $106m of his yearly compensation from share options. Benioff now owns more than 42m company shares, or 7.2% of all shares outstanding, and was granted new options in the amount of $18.9m in 2012.
10 Frank Coyne, Verisk Analytics – $100.4m
Coyne, too, benefited from massive share options exercising 2.4m options for $95.7m. He stepped down as CEO of the risk assessment company this year and is now non-executive chairman.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
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