From Amazon to Coke, shareholders of America’s largest companies are seeing unprecedented backlash to exec-pay packages

Can't do this one on TurboTax... The median pay for CEOs of America's largest companies hit a record $14.7M last year (nine chief execs got packages worth $50M+). That was a year when the S&P 500 rose 27%, which translated to big shareholder returns. Now the S&P is down 18% for the year, and investors are protesting meaty exec-pay packages.

• "Say on pay" votes are mandatory for large public US companies. But historically it's rare to get less than 90% support on exec-pay votes (which, BTW, are nonbinding).
• This year investors have said "nah" to pay packages at dozens of major US companies, including for JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Intel's Pat Gelsinger (two-thirds of investors voted down his $178M comp package). Coke barely made it with 50.5% support.
• Amazon and Meta held their annual "say on pay" votes yesterday. The results: Amazon shareholders greenlighted comp for six execs, including new CEO Andy Jassy. Ditto Meta.

Eyes on the price... While tech stocks are leading the market plunge, tech-exec comp has never been higher. But it's not all cash $$: about two-thirds of CEO comp is made up of stocks or equity awards, which usually vest over years. The idea: CEOs will work harder to boost shareholder value if their pay is directly tied to their company's stock price (but it doesn’t always work that way).

• For the 25 top-paid CEOs, cash accounted for just one-fifth of their comp. The median cash compensation (think: salary, bonuses) was "just" $4M.