While those compensation totals are taken from the company’s financial filings, they are often estimates driven by the companies’ attempts to value the stock their chief executives might receive. As a result, the executives may earn less than those totals, especially if the bear market persists and their companies’ stock prices remain depressed, but they could also take home far higher amounts should the stocks recover.Many of the highest-ranking executives in the survey received pay packages that were far larger than those of the heads of far bigger companies with much larger profits. For example, Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, received his first equity award s …
