The economy was not so hot, but last year was good for a lot of CEOs.
The 100 best-paid chief executive officers at firms with a large presence in the Philadelphia region took home a combined $746 million in 2010.
That was about the size of Zimbabwe's projected budget deficit this year. Or almost the cost of the huge new expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Each of the last three Shrek movies earned about the same.
The CEOs' combined earnings could have paid the wages of 15,283 workers at the median 2010 income in the Philadelphia region.The top 100 CEOs here had a median pay of $5.8 million - half earned less, half earned more. And that median was 11.96 percent higher than a year earlier.
The best paid among the top 100, Comcast Corp. chief Brian L. Roberts, got a package that weighed in at $28.2 million (a 13 percent raise from the year before, when he earned $25 million), according to compensation-research firm Equilar Inc., which compiled the numbers exclusively for The Inquirer. The figure includes a salary of $2.8 million, with bonuses, equity awards and stock options making up the rest.
It was during 2010 that Roberts engineered Comcast's blockbuster acquisition of a controlling share in entertainment and news giant NBCUniversal.
A year ago, Roberts was in third place. The board leader then was the man who oversees West Chester-based QVC, Liberty Media Corp. chief executive Gregory B. Maffei.
Back then, Maffei was luxuriating in $80 million worth of 2009 stock options that were counted in his pay. A year later, he got none. He fell to 49th place this time around, with a $6.4 million paycheck.
No. 2 the last time around was retailer Urban Outfitters' Glen T. Senk. who also had been rewarded with a stock windfall worth, in his case, $27 million. He got no such award in 2010, and his total package of $2.5 million dropped him even farther than Maffei in the Equilar ranking - to No. 81.
Three women made the list. Sunoco Inc.'s Lynn L. Elsenhans, who made $11.5 million, according to Equilar, and DuPont Co.'s Ellen J. Kullman, who made $11.3 million, are Nos. 20 and 21. The Bancorp Inc.'s Betsy Z. Cohen, at $1.8 million, is No. 95.
