Microsoft Corporation's Steve Ballmer took a jab at Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's compensation in an article in The Times. Despite being a billionaire, Larry Ellison took home a pay package valued at $61.2 million and stock option gains of nearly $182 million for the year ending May 31. Meanwhile, Mr. Ballmer was not awarded any stock options and his pay and bonus totalled a mere $980,000. "I'm sort of like a parent to this little child and I'm a large stakeholder in Microsoft," Ballmer told The Times. "And I certainly feel like if I do a good job I'll be well rewarded in the appreciations of our shares."

News broke in Germany over the weekend that Chrysler President Tom LaSorda and former Chief Operating Officer Eric Ridenour were paid bonuses worth millions for their help with the sale of the automaker earlier this year. While the exact amounts of these bonuses are unknown, Erich Klemm - a German labor representative on DaimlerChrysler AG's supervisory board - called them "unreasonably high". This situation begs the question as to whether executives that take positions in troubled companies deserve greater compensation in line with greater job risk. Many companies in hard times are cutting employee compensation and benefits while hiring a high-calibur exeuctive to try and turn it around. Is this trade worth it in the long-run for all parties involved?

Executive compensation is set to rise over 16% during 2007, according to a study conducted by accounting firm KPMG. This rise marks an acceleration from last year's 9% rise and causes greater concern for many shareholders and watchgroups that have been protesting excess compensation and perks.

"Indeed, an interesting phenomenon in the data this year is that among FTSE-100 companies operating share option plans, the grant levels are greater than the normal grant limits, indicating that companies may be using the exceptional circumstances' clauses typical in many plans, and perhaps also the influence of some uncapped plans," said Mary Carter, a partner at KPMG. "This has led to the median actual grant being higher than the median maximum grant opportunity for both FTSE-100 chief executives and FTSE-100 finance directors."

Microsoft Corporation's (NDAQ:MSFT) Steve Ballmer is set to receive $1.28 million in total compensation for the most recent fiscal year, which includes an 86 percent increase in his bonus. The Schedule 14A proxy statement indicates that the Microsoft executive will receive a $650,000 bonus compared to $350,000 last year. Meanwhile, his salary stayed almost the same at $620,000 with an additional $10,000 in benefits-related compensation.

Interestingly, chairman Bill Gates no longer appears on Microsoft's proxy statements as he is no longer one of the three highest paid executives at Microsoft. The company noted that his pay is "substantially less" than those reported in the company's proxy.

News Corp's Rupert Murdoch revealed his executive compensation earlier this month in the company's annual Schedule 14A proxy report and some investors found it a bit surprising. Mr. Murdoch received compensation amounting to $32.1 million under the new SEC rules while also receiving $6.87 million change in his retirement package, which now sits at around $58 million. Other perks included: car-usage benefits of $11,998 and personal use of corporate aircraft valued at $337,427! Some see these numbers as clearly in excess; however, many more are quick to point out that News Corp is a well run company headed by one of the best CEO's in the country. Learn more about Rupert Murdoch's compensation by seeing specific numbers on ExecutiveDisclosure.com.

Executive compensation has been getting a lot of negative press lately but there are cases where high compensation is appropriate. Executive taking part in a spin-off are one of these instances of higher-than-average compensation yet also an instance of long-term outperformance by the stock!

Spin-offs are simply instances where a company divests an existing operating segment by taking it public on the NYSE or NASDAQ. The management teams running these new public companies are often the subordinates to executives running the parent company and therefore are less experienced. However, they are taking on a greater risk by running a spin-off as it has no track record and is often much smaller than the parent company.

Typically, executives of spin-offs are granted higher-than-normal options packages designed to incentivize management to take advantage of the proceeds and synergies obtained from the spin-off process. Despite the higher pay packages, spin-offs have been shown by several studies to outperform the overall stock market during their first two years in existance. This is attributable to several factors, but perhaps the most influencial are the synergies that executives capitalize on.

Another Labor Day has come and gone and executive pay remains excessive despite several new government measures to curb the trends. The minimum wage hike to $5.85 per hour is still seven percent less in real dollars than the minimum wage 10 years ago. Meanwhile, executive compensation is up 45 percent over the same period. Nowadays, executives make more money in one day than the average American worker makes in one year. Clearly, corporate boards are not widely trying to curb compensation while new regulations have only forced executives to take compensation in other forms. Whether or not 2008 will bring any meaningful changes remains to be seen, but for now, there is still much work that needs to be done.

In an annual report released by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy that has been receiving major news coverage, the gap between American CEO pay compared to their European counterparts is highlighted as well as the increasing gap between CEO and worker pay.

Here are the key findings of the report, unambiguously titled "Executive Excess 2007":

CEO-WORKER PAY GAP: CEOs of large U.S. companies last year averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, over 364 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, a calculation based on data from an Associated Press survey of 386 Fortune 500 companies.

The top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers, pocketed an average $657.5 million, Forbes magazine estimates. That’s 22,255 times the pay of an average U.S. worker.

Workers on the bottom rung of the economy have just received their first federal minimum wage increase in a decade. But the inflation-adjusted value of the new minimum, despite the hike, stands 7 percent below the minimum wage level a decade ago. CEO pay, in that decade, has increased over inflation by roughly 45 percent.

“The CEO-worker pay gap is finally getting some high-profile attention from Presidential candidates,” says report co-author Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies. “But lawmakers still aren’t doing nearly enough to tackle the gap.”

PENSION AND PERK GAPS: CEOs at major U.S. corporations enjoyed, on average, $1.3 million in pension gains last year. By contrast, only 58.5 percent of American households led by a 45-to-54-year-old even had a retirement account in 2004. Between 2001 and 2004, the retirement accounts of these households gained an average of only $3,775 in value per year.

CEOs of S&P 500 companies retire with an average $10.1 million in their special Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans, accounts not open to average workers. By contrast, only 36.3 percent of American households headed by an individual 65 or older held any type of retirement account in 2004. The accounts that did exist averaged only $173,552 per household.

The top 386 CEOs took in perks worth an average of $438,342 in 2006. A minimum wage worker would need to work 36 years to earn as much as CEOs obtained just in perks last year.

THE LEADERSHIP PAY GAP: Compensation for American business leaders now wildly dwarfs the pay that goes to leaders in other sectors of American society. The 20 highest-paid individuals at publicly traded corporations last year took home, on average, $36.4 million. That’s 38 times more than the 20 highest-paid leaders in the nonprofit sector and 204 times more than the 20 highest-paid generals in the U.S. military.

The 20 highest-paid figures in the private equity and hedge fund industry collected 3,315 times more in average annual compensation in 2006 than the top 20 officials of the federal government’s executive branch, a group that includes the President of the United States.

“Today’s soaring pay gap between business executives and elected leaders in government essentially makes corruption inevitable,” notes Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow. “With such huge windfalls at stake, business leaders have a powerful incentive to manipulate the political decisions that affect corporate earnings.”

THE US-EUROPEAN EXECUTIVE PAY GAP: In 2006, the 20 highest-paid European corporate managers made an average of $12.5 million, only one third as much as the 20 highest-earning U.S. executives took home last year. These 20 top European execs led companies that generated $19 billion more in sales revenue than the corporations led by their higher-paid American counterparts.