Updated April 2026 · SEC DEF 14A data
CEO Pay Blog
Data-driven analysis of executive compensation at U.S. public companies, every story is anchored to the underlying SEC DEF 14A proxy statement. We currently track 209 companies and 836 named executive officers, with a median CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 157:1 across the dataset. Of the top 50 highest-paid CEOs, 12 earn an A on our Pay-for-Performance Grade and 0 earn an F.
What This Blog Covers
CEO pay is one of the most disclosed and least understood numbers in public markets. Every U.S. public company is required to publish a Summary Compensation Table in its annual proxy statement, broken into salary, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentives, pension change, and other compensation. The headline "total comp" figure routinely runs 50–70% stock-based, which means it is sensitive to grant-date fair value assumptions under FASB ASC 718 rather than what the executive actually realized. We translate those filings into plain-English summaries with grade-style scoring so a long-term holder, a board director, or a curious worker can read the numbers without a securities-law background.
The blog focuses on three recurring questions. First — how much do the highest-paid CEOs earn, and is the number going up or down? Second — when CEO pay rises, does it track shareholder return, or are boards approving raises during stretches of underperformance? Third — what does the say-on-pay vote say about how investors view a particular pay package? Each post links back to the relevant ranking, company profile, or industry comparison so the underlying records are one click away.
Authoritative external context: the SEC's EDGAR system hosts every proxy filing referenced here. Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis provide the proxy-advisor recommendations that drive most institutional say-on-pay votes. The Economic Policy Institute publishes the long-run CEO-to-worker pay-ratio time series we benchmark against.
Latest Articles
April 14, 2026
Highest Paid CEOs in 2026: Full List
The top 25 highest-paid CEOs ranked by total compensation from SEC proxy filings, with pay-performance grades for each.
April 7, 2026
CEO to Worker Pay Ratio: What the Numbers Mean
What is the CEO-to-worker pay ratio? How is it calculated? Industry breakdowns and what the data reveals about compensation inequality.
March 30, 2026
Which CEOs Are Overpaid? A Data-Driven Analysis
Companies where CEO pay grade is F despite poor stock performance. Data shows which executives are paid the most relative to results.
How We Source and Verify Every Number
The pipeline starts at SEC EDGAR, where we fetch each company's most recent DEF 14A as machine-readable XBRL. The Summary Compensation Table fields map directly to standardized concepts under the SEC's structured-data taxonomy, no parsing of free-text disclosures is required for the headline pay numbers. We then cross-check each total against the company's own narrative description in the Compensation Discussion and Analysis section, flagging any deltas above $50,000 for manual review. Revenue, employee count, and CEO-to-median ratio come from the corresponding 10-K and the pay-ratio disclosure required since 2018 under SEC Regulation S-K Item 402.
Total shareholder return is computed from CRSP-equivalent split-adjusted price data over the trailing 36 months, with dividends reinvested. Sector benchmarks come from S&P 500 GICS sector indices so a 25% TSR in a 50%-up sector is correctly flagged as relative underperformance. Say-on-pay vote totals are pulled from the 8-K filed within four business days of each shareholder meeting. The full methodology page documents every input, weight, and edge case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does CEOPayWatch source its compensation data?
Every compensation figure on this site comes from public SEC filings — specifically the DEF 14A proxy statement that every U.S. public company files annually before its shareholder meeting. We pull XBRL-tagged Summary Compensation Tables from the SEC EDGAR system at https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml, then enrich each record with revenue, market-cap, and shareholder-return data from the corresponding 10-K. There is no surveying, no estimating, and no proprietary smoothing — only what the company itself disclosed under oath to the SEC.
How often is the CEO pay data updated?
Proxy season runs from late February through July each year. As DEF 14A filings hit EDGAR, our data pipeline picks them up within 24 hours and rebuilds the affected company, executive, industry, and ranking pages. The most recent refresh covers 209 companies and 836 named executive officers. The site as a whole was last updated April 2026.
What is the Pay-for-Performance Grade?
The Pay-for-Performance Grade is a 0–100 score that asks whether CEO compensation aligns with shareholder results. It blends four signals: 3-year total shareholder return measured against the sector benchmark (35%), revenue growth versus CEO compensation growth (25%), the most recent say-on-pay shareholder vote (25%), and CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio versus industry peers (15%). The composite maps to an A–F letter, A means pay tracks performance; F means pay diverges sharply.
Why does CEO pay matter to shareholders and workers?
Executive compensation is the single largest discretionary expense most public-company boards approve each year, and it sits at the centre of corporate governance. For shareholders, the question is whether the board's pay decisions create durable value, the average top-10 CEO in our database earns $33.9M. For workers, the question is fairness, the median CEO-to-worker pay ratio across our coverage is 157:1. Say-on-pay votes, mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act since 2011, are the formal channel both groups use to push back.
How is this blog different from a regular finance blog?
Every post is anchored to a structured dataset: when we write about overpaid CEOs, we publish the underlying Pay-for-Performance scores and link to each filing on EDGAR. When we write about pay ratios, we link to the company profile that shows the year-by-year ratio history. Readers can always click through to the raw SEC source. That data-first discipline is closer to a Bloomberg or ISS workflow than a typical opinion blog.
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, DEF 14A proxy statements via EDGAR. Public domain.
Last updated 2026-04-06 · 209 companies, 836 executives.