CEO pay is determined by a company’s board of directors. Those directors are compensated for the time they spend shaping the company’s strategy. Here’s what the Fortune 100 executives paid each other from 2008 to 2012.
David M. Cote is among the highest-paid CEOs in the country. He spent 25 years with General Electric, mostly as a senior executive. In 1999, he left the company and became the chairman, president and CEO of TRW Inc., a provider of products and services for the aerospace, information systems and automotive markets, where he worked until 2002. That year, he joined Honeywell International, a leading manufacturer of military aerospace products.
In 2011, Cote made more than $37 million in salary and bonuses from Honeywell, according to a review of public records. That year, JPMorgan Chase also paid him $245,000 for serving as a director on its board. Cote was a director at JPMorgan Chase from 2007 to 2013. In February of this year, Cote was nominated as a Class B director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for a term that would end Dec. 31, 2016. According to the bank's guidelines, a Class B director cannot be an officer, director or an employee with any bank -- meaning Cote won't be able to hold additional positions with banks like JPMorgan.
Cote advocates for expanding access to energy supplies in North America through development of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which, if built, could carry 830,000 barrels of oil daily from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups strongly oppose the pipeline.
Cote is also a member of the steering committee of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a bipartisan group that advocates for a federal debt-reduction plan. He also is vice chairman of the Business Roundtable, a pro-business advocacy group.
In 2010, President Barack Obama named Cote to the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, known as the Simpson-Bowles commission. Obama also tapped Cote to serve as co-chairman of the U.S.-India CEO Forum.
A graduate of the University of New Hampshire, in 2009 Cote received an honorary professorship from the Beihang University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Beijing, China.
From January 2008 to December 2012, if you bought shares in companies when David M. Cote joined the board, and sold them when he left, you would have a 11.2 percent return on your investment, compared to a -2.8 percent return from the S&P 500.
Jan. 1, 2002 to July 26, 2016
Other board members at Honeywell International during this time were Bradley Sheares, Clive Hollick, D. Scott Davis and 12 more.
Jan. 1, 1997 to Jan. 1, 2013
Other board members at JPMorgan Chase during this time were Crandall C. Bowles, David C. Novak, James A. Bell and 8 more.
The Pay Pals project relies on financial research conducted by the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
Sources: Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Honeywell International SEC filings (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012).
By Shane Shifflett, Jay Boice, Hilary Fung and Aaron Bycoffe