Study: Typical CEO Pay Up 6% to $9.6 Million

Multi-million dollar bonuses for chief executives are scorned these days, but a study released today shows that the financial chieftains already got a noticeable hit in the pocketbook last year. Cash bonuses fell by 20.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to Equilar, a company which tracks executive compensation. For S&P 500 companies, that drove overall compensation down by 6.8 percent over the same period, the study found.

Struggling companies often do better when they focus on their core brand. There are good reasons to have many different brands. A broad portfolio lets you target different customers with unique brands. It also reduces risk; if one brand gets into trouble the other brands can help offset the declines. The problem is that managing a big brand portfolio is difficult; each brand requires marketing investment and attention. Brands don’t thrive when you neglect them.

Profits at big U.S. companies broke records last year, and so did pay for CEOs.

Royal Bank of Canada Chief Executive Officer Gordon Nixon was paid more than his counterparts at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. as record earnings last year helped most Canadian bank CEOs narrow the pay gap with the U.S.

Bank of Montreal, Canada’s fourth-largest lender, awarded Chief Executive Officer William Downe $9.22 million in 2012 compensation, a 6.8% drop from a year earlier, after the bank missed some financial targets. Downe, 60, received about $1.25 million in salary, a $1 million bonus, $6.95 million in shares and stock options for the year, and $12,540 in other compensation, the Toronto-based lender said Friday in a filing. He received $9.89 million for 2011. The amounts exclude pension costs.

JERUSALEM — A new study weighed in on one of the hot-button subplots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Monday, saying schoolbooks of both sides largely present one-sided narratives but rarely resort to demonization. Palestinians embraced the findings as a rejection of Israeli claims that their schoolbooks incite hatred of Israel, while Israel’s Education Ministry denounced the three-year U.S. State Department-funded review of 20,000 textbook pages as politically motivated “libel.”