Three Indians among Forbes 500 top paid CEOs

WASHINGTON - PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, Quest Diagnostics’ Surya N. Mohapatra and Adobe Systems’ Shantanu Narayen are three Indian Americans figuring in the Forbes list of highest paid CEOs of the 500 biggest US companies.

Nooyi (93th) earned a compensation of $10.66 million, Mohapatra (96th) got $10.29 million and Narayen at 425th slot took home a pay packet of $1.88 million, the US business magazine said.

With a total compensation of $141.36 mn, H. Lawrence Culp Jr, the chief of the diversified manufacturing and technology firm Danaher, is at the top of the list.

“For the third consecutive year, the chief executives of the 500 biggest companies in the US (as measured by a composite ranking of sales, profits, assets and market value) took a cut in total compensation,” Forbes said.

“The latest collective pay cut, 30 percent, was the biggest of the past three years (11 percent and 15 percent declines in the previous two years),” it said.

Together, these 500 CEOs earned $4 billion in 2009, which averages out to $8 million apiece. “Although down from last year (49 percent), the value realised from exercised stock options again account for the main component of pay, 30 percent this year,” the magazine noted.

At the second spot is Oracle’s Lawrence J. Ellison with a pay packet $130.23 million, followed at the third place by Chesapeake Energy’s Aubrey K. McClendon with $114.29 million.

Occidental Petroleum’s Ray R. Irani took the fourth position with a compensation of $103.07 million and Yum Brands’s David C. Novak is placed at the fifth with $76.49 million.

Others in the list include Hewlett-Packard’s Mark V. Hurd (26th) with $24.74 million, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch (53rd) with $15.55 million, General Electric’s Jeffrey R. Immelt (237th) $5.08 million and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd C. Blankfein (472nd) with a $1.13 million pay packet.