James Saft wonders "Is the executive pay bubble popping?" He notes that "Signs are it won’t just be the salaries of bankers coming under fire" in the coming months:

U.S. Treasury Secretary-designate Tim Geithner told Congress last week he would consider extending a $500,000 cap on the tax deductibility of executive pay to companies beyond those taking government bailout money.

“If confirmed, I would consider extending at least some of the TARP provisions and features of the $500,000 cap to U.S. companies generally as well as potentially imposing other rules beyond those potentially in effect,” he wrote in reply to questions from Senator Carl Levin.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Intel Corp. has become the latest company to let shareholders vote on its executive-compensation policies, showing that more big corporations are reacting to concern about high executive pay and indications that Congress will take action.

The computer-chip maker will give shareholders a nonbinding vote on its pay policies -- a "say on pay" vote -- at its annual meeting in May, said Intel Corporate Secretary Cary Klafter. In the past two weeks, both Hewlett-Packard Co. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. moved toward annual shareholder votes on compensation in 2011 and 2010, respectively.

Don't get too excited - these votes, after all, are nonbinding and deciding to hold them is more a gesture than an actual surrender of compensation control on the part of Intel and other companies. Even so, they are a step in the right direction.

From Daniel Lee of the Indianapolis Star:

Former NiSource Chief Executive Gary Neale's total pay more than doubled after the Merrillville energy company inherited a valuable service contract with Hewitt Associates, which also advises NiSource's board on executive pay.

From 1996 to 2000, NiSource stock rose 32 percent, and Neale made $9.5 million.

Then in 2000, Hewitt picked up NiSource's benefits administration as part of a merger. In the next five years, the stock price fell 61 percent, but Neale's compensation was worth $21 million.

"In effect, the consultants are being asked to evaluate the worth of the executives who hire them and pay them millions of dollars," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a December 2007 hearing. "Like the auditors who signed off on Enron's books, they have an inherent conflict of interest."

Yahoo's new CEO, who is guaranteed to receive at least $11 million in 2009, has taken it upon herself to save the company money by freezing salaries. Not her own salary, though.

Yahoo's employees will not receive any kind of annual raise unless they are prompted to other jobs.

Carol Bartz, on the other hand, is eligible for a $4 million bonus depending on Yahoo's financial performance on top of the $11 million she will get no matter what this year.

Doesn't seem like all Yahoo employees are getting a salary freeze (especially given that the company's last CEO was paid $1 a year - though Jerry Yang was already a billionaire from Yahoo stock  and probably only deserved 50 cents a year at most given his performance).

Newly inaugurated President Barack Obama ordered a pay freeze for White House employees earning over $100,000 a year on his first full day in office - about 120 staffers.

"During this period of economic emergency," Obama said Wednesday, "families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington."

On average, White House staffers get a 1%-4% raise each year, so by freezing salaries Obama is saving the government about $443,000 next year.

From the AP:

Under three years of Mark Hurd's leadership, Hewlett-Packard Co. has added more than $30 billion in sales, seen its profit more than triple, and for that "exceptional and sustained" performance Hurd was rewarded with a $34 million pay package in the latest fiscal year.

I actually agree that Mark Hurd has done an excellent job overall at HP, but don't forget two mediating facts that make a raise questionable:

HP is slashing 24,600 positions, nearly 8 percent of its 320,000 workers — Hurd will have cut nearly 40,000 jobs in two big rounds of layoffs since he took the job.

Layoffs are sometimes a necessary part of managing a company, but rewarding yourself for cost-cutting by eliminating jobs (which doesn't take a genius to order) sends the wrong message to employees still with the company.

Even worse: HP shares lost about 20% of their value in 2008. I don't agree that share performance should be the only criteria in executive compensation - but CEOs should share in the pain of a poor economic environment.

From TheStreet.com:

At first blush, the president-elect seems to endorse the idea of curbing excessive pay. Obama in March called for a "shift in cultures of our financial institutions and our regulatory agencies" in a speech at Cooper Union in New York. Among the changes Obama advocated was "to realign incentives and the compensation packages so that both high-level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders," according to a transcript of the speech.

"The environment is certainly ripe to push for more meaningful reform," says Michael Garland, the director of value strategy at activist pension fund investor CtW Investment Group. "People are disgusted not only by the level of pay, but also by the perverse incentives that our current pay system has fostered.

So, will Obama act on executive pay reform or only "hope" the problem fixes itself? It is a politically opportune time for action, but personally - despite my strong view expressed on this site that CEO pay is almost always too high - I hope Obama stays out of it.

I think the government has enough to deal with right now - lawmakers should stop showboating with vanity hearings and stands on steroids and CEO pay (to name just a few). Shareholders, not Obama, need to curb CEO pay.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger received $2 million salary and a $13.9 million bonus for fiscal 2008, and his overall compensation was up nearly 11% from 2007...

...Mr. Iger's total compensation for 2008 was valued at $30.6 million, which was up from the year before, when his total compensation was valued around $27.7 million.

If you are wondering where the other 14 or so million on top of his salary and bonus came from (in order to get total compensation of $30 million for the year), $7.7 million is in stock awards, $6 million is in stock option and nearly $800,000 was for travel and security. Now this may seem like a lot, but as the article's author Peter Sanders notes:

Shares of Burbank, Calif.,-based Disney, which have fared better than their peers in the media space, were up 10 cents to close at $21.46 in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

What does "fared better than their peers" mean, you might wonder? Disney shares lost more than 20% of their value in 2008. However, only an 11% increase in CEO compensation in a year when the company loses a fifth of its market capitalization is a favor to shareholders because:

This year's bonus was $2.4 million less than he was entitled to; the company said Mr. Iger decided to forgo that money as a gesture of goodwill.

What a generous man.