[WalterBright]

The thing about CEOs is they have enormous leverage over the future of their companies. The classic example is, of course, Apple, which has had numerous CEOs and one can compare their effects. Jobs took the company from near bankruptcy to the largest (by market cap) company in the world.

For another, Microsoft is in transition to a new CEO. Isn't it obvious what an absolutely enormous risk this is to MS shareholders, employees, stakeholders? A good decision here, a bad decision there, has very visible and costly effects, affecting an awful lot of people.

Their CEO pay is almost meaningless next to this kind of leverage. Any business is going to want the best CEO they can get, and that of course bids up the compensation packages.

I'm a Microsoft and Apple shareholder. Do I care what CEO they pick? You bet. Do I care what their compensation is? I care if they get a CEO that costs or makes the company billions far more than the pittance it will cost me in CEO compensation (as CEO compensation comes out of the shareholders' hide).

[staunch]

What you individually care about as a shareholder is really not as relevant as you may think. Unless you're holding onto your Apple and Microsoft shares over 30+ years you're not looking at the health of the company from the same perspective as the CEO and Board should be.

Their job is to look out for all shareholders, not just the ones that want to see their portfolio's value increase in the next 5 years.

It's true that the amount CEOs are paid is relatively unimportant, but you're absolutely wrong if you think how they're compensated isn't important. The difference between giving vested stock options vs cash (for example) gives you very a different incentive structure.

[WalterBright]

> What you individually care about as a shareholder is really not as relevant as you may think.

It's 100% relevant to my buy/sell decisions, and the market aggregate of that is what sets the share price, and that's a very strong signal to management.