Put yourself in the shoes of the board of directors and you'll find they too don't want to overpay for CEOs. But paychecks are market driven, and lowering the pay means you'll end up with a less experienced or worse CEO.
I guess that would be a problem if board members were willing to take a hit on profitability to load up their pal. Maybe shareholders don't notice, or while the market is doing well they don't question it.
> the companies run by the CEOS who were paid at the top 10% of the scale, had the worst performance. How much worse? The firms returned 10% less to their shareholders than did their industry peers
By that metric isn't Amazon the worst company there is?
To their credit, Amazon is pretty diligent about making sure that high performing employees get pay raises to match their market. My record is a 30% raise, mostly by switching job functions from non-tech to a tech role.
