Apple Inc. (NDAQ:AAPL) may face some increased scrutiny after Fred Anderson, the former chief financial officer of Apple, pointed the finger at Steve Jobs. The statement, which comes just after the SEC said Anderson had settled charges related to backdating in 2001, was issued by Anderson's attorney and stated simply that Jobs told Anderson that the Apple board had already signed off on the grant. In the end, Steve Jobs received a pass on any penalties while the SEC forced Anderson to pay more than $3.5 million in what the government called "ill-gotten gains" along with interest. Now given the statements by Anderson and another defendant, the SEC may continue to investigate Jobs' involvement in the backdating problems that plagued Apple.

The House voted Friday to give shareholders a voice in executive pay packages through a proxy vote at annual shareholders meetings. The bill passed 269-134 and now goes to the Senate. The White House and most Republicans shunned the bill, however, stating that the SEC has already recently taken steps to make corporate pay packages more transparent and that the government should stay away from corporate affairs. President Bush said earlier this year that while executive pay packages are sometimes extravagent, it was not a matter for the government to get involved. Whether or not this bill passes through the Senate remains to be seen; however, many are predicting that it will face a lot of opposition before going into law.

The House is set to approve a bill by the end of the week that would give shareholders greater say in CEO pay, but the bill's chances of becoming law are burdened by opposition from the White House and many business groups. The bill's chief sponsor, Barney Frank, says he wants to give shareholders an easy avenue to voice discontent over runaway executive pay. Meanwhile, the White House dismissed the bill amongst complaints from several business groups that argue it would only further burden American corporations. John Costellani of the Businesses Roundtable says its intrusive and impractical while Republicans on the hill worried that the legislation would allow labor groups to force embarrassing corporate votes. While many shareholders already have the right to vote on pay packages, this new legislation would simply mandate votes for all companies and is supported by a number of institutional investors. It remains to be seen if this bill will make progress, but it is definitely a piece of news to watch!

Citigroup (NYSE:C) shareholders narrowly lost a vote to have veto powers over pay awarded to individual executives at the world's largest bank. The rebel group vote signaled increasing discontent over executive rewards in the US. Despite the measure failing, the high turnout in favor will be seen as a severe reprimand for Citigroup's bosses, who have struggled to compete with JP Morgan and the BOA. The vote also came just days after Citigroup announced the largest one-time layoff by a Wall Street bank ever seen, with 5% of its workforce (or 17,000 jobs) slashed. More, the cut came after CEO Charles Prince was awarded a $26 million 2006 pay package. Perhaps it's no wonder why there was such a high turnout...

USA Today released its executive compensation report today that showed the top compensation for CEOs at 150 large cap companies whose fiscal year ended on or after December 15, 2006. The top 10 earners account to the report are:

1. Ray Irani (Occidental Petroleum) - $52,143,188
2. E. Stanley O'Neal (Merrill Lynch) - $46,375,347
3. Alan Mulally (Ford Motor) - $39,128,100
4. Louis Camilleri (Altria Group) - $31,677,662
5. Edward E. Whitacre Jr. (AT&T) - $31,497,742
6. Ronald A. Williams (Aetna) - $30,860,085
7. James Dimon (JPMorgan Chase) - $27,487,858
8. Brian L. Roberts (Comcast) - $27,451,276
9. James E. Rogers (Duke Energy) - $27,328,318
10. Richard M. Kovacevich (Wells Fargo) - $26,864,670

Are these amounts fair? The best way to determine that is to compare their pay with their performance. This can be done using the free tools at ExecutiveDisclosure.com which chart CEO pay versus company performance along with CEO pay versus industry CEO pay. Both metrics can help investors quickly determine if CEOs are over or under paid relative to their peers and performance.

U.S. District Judge Leo Glasser has signed off on a restitution agreement requiring the former CEO of Computer Associates to pay at least $52 million over the next two years to victims of a huge accounting fraud at one of the world's largest software companies. The agreement with Sanjay Kumar, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison, could possibly raise in amount to close to $800 million in payments to people who lost money. Prosecutors, however, note that he and his family will probably never have enough money to pay that amount. Instead, the deal opted for Kumar to make installment payments of $40 million, $10 million and $2 million by December 2008 and then pay 20% of his annual income once he is released from prison for the rest of his life.

Executive pay problems aren't only confined to the United States. A major investor revolt over retiring BP executive Lord Browne's compensation package. Investors who opposed the report were concerned over Browne's still undetermined, but potentially large, exit package and the lack of a specific link between directors' pay and the company's safety performance. Meanwhile, the company dismissed media reports that the executive was being overpaid, insisting that the majority of the reported figures by the media are in stock options that are based on speculative future prices. Moreover, the company argued that the changes he implemented as far as safety is concerned would benefit the company in the future - therefore this pay was also deserved. Despite the opposition, the measures passed by a vote of 83% to 17% in the company's latest proxy. The opposition underscores the increasing concerns that investors worldwide have over executive compensation, however.

Many companies are quickly discovering that limiting executive pay may be easy, but keeping these limits in place is a whole separate issue. The WSJ ran a story today citing an example of this: Whole Food Markets Inc. The grocer limited compensation for its top executives to a multiple of the average Whole Foods workers' pay. The cap started at eight times average pay when the copany was private in the 80s, but quickly grew to 14 times in the early 90s after the company went public. Last year, the cap hit 19 times average pay. Why the raise? there is a strong conflict between the board and management. The board needs to keep compensation low enough to keep shareholders happy while keeping it high enough to retain quality management. The average pay of a CEO in a large American corporation grew to $11.6 million in 2005, or 411 times the typical US worker. This sets the standards to retain quality executives quite high, which has led to the shareholder rebellion that we have been seeing recently. Whether or not this problem will settle down again remains to be seen; however, it is important to realize the struggle that the board has to put up with before anyone can complain about executive compensation growing too high.