For S&P CFOs, Pay Is Down and Bonuses Are Up

Equilar has just released its 2009 pay reports for S&P 400 and 600 CFOs, completing the trifecta begun two weeks ago with the S&P 500 CFO pay study. The most interesting part of comparing the three groups is that cap size has a small effect on CEO pay cuts, but a big effect on bonus increases. To wit:

Pay Decrease for CFOs in 2009

• Large-cap: 3.1 percent ($2.675 million median total pay)
• Mid-cap: 2.7 percent ($1.399 million)
• Small-cap: 0.64 percent ($840,903)

Bonus Increases for CFOs in 2009

• Large-cap: 20.9 percent ($536,250 median bonus)
• Mid-cap: 14.8 percent ($280,000)
• Small-cap: 10.2 percent ($145,457)

See a trend? CFOs of large-cap companies may have taken the biggest total pay cuts (which still weren’t all that big), but they recouped much larger bonus increases as a reward. Were it not for those pesky 2008 option grants, salaries would be flying pretty high. What’s more, this trend also plays out with the upside-downside of good and bad performance: on a percentage scale, large-cap companies’ CFOs see bigger bonus increases when they perform the best and smaller bonus decreases when they perform the worst. Smaller S&P companies may be under less scrutiny, but they’ve somehow absorbed the “pay for performance” rhetoric more quickly than their large-cap counterparts.