A survey by Corporate Library indicates that pay for CEOs running S&P 500 companies grew 23% in the last year to a median level of $8.8 million. That's 1.64 times faster than the 14% increase in the S&P 500 average from October 6, 2006 to October 25, 2007.
Should you care? If you're a shareholder of a company whose CEO pay is growing faster than its shareholder value, you have two choices: sell the stock or try to organize your fellow shareholders and lobby the board for a CEO who will increase shareholder value faster.
There's no way you'll realistically be able to get the company to limit increases in its CEO pay to a level below the growth in shareholder value. Instead I think it would make sense to look at the ratio between CEO pay and increases in shareholder value.
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