Chief executive officer pay levels have become part of a heated debate about how much public company leaders should be paid. Some packages have risen into the tens of millions of dollars each year. Shareholder groups have tried to block these large pay packages, but almost entirely without success. CEOs at big companies do work hours that some admit can stretch to 60 or more a week. Boards of directors of these companies, on the other hand, attend a handful of meetings a year, often as few as one per quarter. In some cases, the modest work has been rewarded with huge sums of compensation. Several companies paid their boards over $10 million last year. Here is a list of 25 boards of directors with shocking pay packages.
Directors do need to work between meetings to prepare for them. At some companies, mergers and acquisitions activity, financial audits and executive compensation meetings do take up additional hours. Compensation for these usually comes in packages that include both cash and stock awards or options. However, public companies that made $10 million in aggregate compensation to their boards numbered nine last year, according to data from MyLogIQ.
At the top of the list is Tesla. The total compensation of its 10-person board reached nearly $61 million. Note that CEO Elon Musk does not receive money to sit on the board.
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