An article in BusinessWeek on June 12 pointed out that, although the compensation of a chief information officer (CIO) at the same company often does not match that of a chief executive officer (CEO), the remuneration for CIOs at certain companies is still quite substantial. For example, according to Equilar, an information service company specializing in statistics related to executive compensation data, when factoring in base salary, bonuses, non-equity incentive plan compensation, stock awards, and other forms of compensation, HP's Chief Information Officer, Randall Mott, had a total income exceeding $24 million in 2008. This made him the highest-paid CIO of public companies for the fiscal year 2008.
According to The New York Times, the Treasury Department has instructed Kenneth R. Feinberg to oversee the compensation of executives at seven companies, including AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, GM, and Chrysler. In the future, executive pay will be subject to increasingly stringent reviews.
The income disparity among IT executives at different companies is relatively large. According to Equilar, the base salaries of the top five highest-paid CIOs in the fiscal year 2008 ranged from $500,000 to $821,000. However, according to the results of an IT executive salary survey conducted by market research and consulting firm Janco Associates in January 2009, the average salary for IT executives at large enterprises was only $142,914.