Executive Pay | featured news

Chief executives of AIG, GM and Ally Financial, three companies bailed out by U.S. taxpayers and which remain partly owned by the U.S. Treasury, won't receive overall pay increases this year.

Sears CEO Louis D'Ambrosio received a compensation package valued at $9.9 million last year, most of it in stock awards.

Even as his company weathers its biggest crisis ever, Rupert Murdoch is still pulling in a huge salary from News Corp.Regulatory filings released on Friday showed that Murdoch's total compensation for the 2011 fiscal year was $33.3 million. As technology writer Peter Kafka noted, this included a $12.5 million bonus. Murdoch also received $8.5 million in stock.

Twenty-five of the 100 highest paid U.S. CEOs earned more last year than their companies paid in federal income tax, a pay study said on Wednesday.

But corporate watchdogs are hopeful that the most egregious pay practices can be reined in as new 'say-on-pay' votes and other investor-friendly rules take effect. The $6.4 million that Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. paid Chief Executive Craig Martin last year normally wouldn't have raised many eyebrows.

The CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. received a pay package in 2010 worth $18.7 million, a 4 percent dip from the year before, according to an Associated Press calculation, as the world's largest retailer struggled to reverse a decline in a key revenue figure.Mike Duke, 61, received a base salary of about $1.2 million and a performance-based bonus of nearly $3.9 million for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31.

CBS Corp. Chief Executive Les Moonves received compensation for 2010 valued at about $57.7 million, up by about a third from his compensation for the previous year.

Taxpayers won't foot the bill for raises for the chief executives at any of the four firms—GM, Chrysler, AIG, Ally Financial—still receiving assistance under the federal bank bailout.

A federal watchdog criticized federal regulators' oversight of executive pay packages for top officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a report published Thursday. The top six executives at the mortgage giants earned $35 million in the last two years, according to the report from the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the mortgage giants.