CeoPay

The average CEO of an S&P 500 company brings home almost $13 million -- but some earn much more. The AP's list of the 10 highest-paid CEOs highlights where the biggest paychecks went -- and what America's companies got in return.

Profits at big U.S. companies broke records last year, and so did pay for CEOs. The head of a typical public company made $9.6 million in 2011, according to an analysis by the AP using data from Equilar, an executive pay research firm.

Nearly 70 top executives at three companies bailed out by the taxpayers during the 2008 financial crisis -- AIG, Ally Financial and GM -- were ordered to take pay 10% cuts by the federal government, and the CEOs had their pay frozen at 2011 levels.

Twenty five CEOs of America's top companies earned more money than their companies paid in taxes last year, according to the Institute for Policy Studies' Executive Excess report. See which firms and CEOs made the list.

Mark Hurd will receive an annual salary of $950,000 and a bonus of as much as $10 million for fiscal 2011 in his new position as president of Oracle. It's a big drop from his HP compensation.

Now that General Motors and Ford Motor Co. are staring into the abyss of free market capitalism (stay competitive or die), the two remaining publicly -owned members of the vaunted Big Three automakers are sucking up to the Fed for a piece of the $700 billion financial industry bailout. Congress has...