Executive Pay

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.

At Goldman Sachs annual shareholders' meeting on Thursday, CEO Lloyd Blankfein mixed it up a bit with a shareholder representative of the Almighty. And it wasn't the first time he's had a little trouble from the brides of Christ.

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.

The average person may find it hard to imagine what big company CEOs do to justify their massive pay packages. Shareholders often ask a similar question: Why pay executives so much when the returns they produce are often so modest? But that's a question that doesn't apply to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday approved a measure that gives institutional shareholders a vote on executive pay at large corporations, part of regulators' efforts to give investors greater say over top-level salaries that have been described as excessive.

Now that General Motors is on better financial footing and the automaker's initial public offering of stock is behind it, CEO Daniel Akerson is reportedly seeking to have government restrictions on executive pay eased.

Thanks to public outcry and the prodding of the SEC, public companies don't throw crazy perks at their CEOs the way they once did. But execs still routinely get lavish benefits that increase their pay by millions. See our list of this year's most outrageous CEO perks.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has been praised for her blunt, foul-mouthed management style. But with shares of the company down more than 14% this year, her $39 million pay package is a little hard to swallow.

Considering how often airline industry executives complain about how hard it is to run a profitable carrier, one might expect their efforts could go unrewarded -- at least monetarily. Not so at the new United Continental Holdings, where big post-merger raises are coming for top management.