Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) will be ushering in Brian Dunn as its new CEO next month. Dunn, a company veteran, has some solid plans to keep the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. afloat throughout the ongoing economic recession.

But before that happens, current CEO Brad Anderson won't be going out with a bang. A pay bang, that is.

When Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) announced that CEO Brad Anderson would retire this summer, the obvious choice to replace him was current COO and President Brian Dunn. After all, Dunn is a Best Buy vet and has had a hand in making Best Buy the top consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. With Anderson and Dunn running the show, Best Buy rose past every competitor and held the larger mass merchants at bay.

The retailer has not had an easy time with the recent consumer spending slowdown, but its fundamentals are very solid and it retains a competitive advantage. Consumers continue spending money at Best Buy, and voting with dollars is a sign of success. Dunn will face one of the hardest times in Best Buy's history since consumers have tightened their collective purse strings. Still, he is the right pick and Best Buy's long-term future continues to be very bright, the current retail malaise not withstanding.

In the light of consumer electronics giant Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) beating up all over the competition, has its CEO earned his pay recently? Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson received $5.6 million in fiscal year 2007, which I say I say is underpaid according to how Best Buy has performed in the same period. In other words, this is probably a case of a CEO not being compensated enough. When some CEOs take home packages worth tens of millions for under-performance (with incompetent boards blessing them highly), it's refreshing to see a CEO who has taken his company to the top, has taken the share price for a ride (it's not done fabulous, but it has not sunk) and is being paid according to that effort.

If you were a BBY shareholder back in August 2005 when a 3:2 split happened and ended up selling late in the summer of 2006 (as fears of losses from flat-panel TV price plummeting gripped the industry), you may be sitting pretty right now. Are you? If so, do you agree with Anderson's pay package for Best Buy's fiscal 2007?

Although BBY has not made much movement in the most recent year, Best Buy as a company continues to make what I consider to be all the right moves from a merchandising and services standpoint. At the same time, competitor Circuit City (NYSE:CC) has told 3,400 employees to take off and CompUSA us in the midst of closing half of its stores in the U.S. that show under-performance. That leaves Best Buy as a top PC retailer (where margins can be very thin) as well as a burgeoning provider of all kinds of services (Geek Squad and the purchase of Speakeasy). Things appear on track for Anderson and Co., in other words.