This won’t shock anyone. CEO pay is still a gold mine.

They rake it in no matter what:

Only one of the 10 highest paid CEOs ranked among the top 10% by investor performance in the survey, conducted by the consultancy Hay Group. That was Brent Saunders, chief of Actavis PLC, which has since renamed itself Allergan PLC.

Meanwhile two of the 10 best paid CEOs— Viacom Inc.’s Philippe Dauman and General Electric Co.’s Jeff Immelt—got higher compensation even though the value of their shareholders’ investments in the company fell.

And:

Overall, total compensation for the CEOs in the Journal’s survey climbed by a median of 13.5% to about $13.6 million, nearly two-thirds of which was linked to performance. That’s well above the 2.2% average rise in wages and salaries for U.S. private-sector employees overall last year, according to the Labor Department. But shareholders did even better, with a median return including share-price appreciation and dividends for companies in the survey of 16.6%.[emphasis added]

Here is the funniest thing–funny in a horrific way:

Compensation for executives at the top of the investor-return rankings generally rose. One exception was John Hammergren, head of medical-products company McKesson Corp., whose pay slumped 49.9% to $25.9 million, while investors reaped a return of 64.6%.

The decline mainly reflected a drop in the value of Mr. Hammergren’s pension. Heeding complaints from investors, the CEO agreed last year to cut his record-setting $159 million pension benefit by $45 million, and McKesson revamped its incentive compensation program for top executives.

So, in other words, Hammergren found it in his great generous self to *only* have a pension benefit of $114 million. How will he manage in his golden years?