For its annual analysis of CEO pa y, The Associated Press used data provided by Equilar, an executive data firm.Equilar examined regulatory filings detailing the pay packages of 337 executives. Equilar looked at companies in the S&P 500 index that filed proxy statements with federal regulators between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2026. To avoid the distortions caused by sign-on bonuses, the sample includes only CEOs in the job for at least two years.To calculate CEO pay, Equilar adds salary, bonus, perks, stock awards, stock option awards and other pay components.Stock awards can either be time-based, which means CEOs have to wait a certain amount of time to get them, or performance-based, which means they have to meet certain goals before getting them. Stock options usually give the CEO the right to buy shares in the future at the price they’re trading at when the options are granted. All are meant to tie the CEO’s pay to the company’s performance.
To determine what stock and option awards are worth, Equilar uses the value of an award on the day it’s granted, as recorded in the proxy statement. Actual values in the future can vary widely from what the company estimates.
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