U.S. Bank CEO's make millions more than their counterparts

If I were to ask you who had a higher salary, the chairman of the world’s largest company or the chairman of the world’s fourth-largest company, I’d bet you’d think it was the CEO of the world’s largest company. Well in the case of the banking industry you’d be wrong. Jiang Jianqing, chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's largest bank, earned $234,700 last year. That seems like a pretty respectable salary until you hear how much his counterpart at JP Morgan Chase earned. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the world’s fourth largest bank, JP Morgan Chase & Co., made $19.6 million in 2008. This is according to a recent study by Reuters, which took a look at eighteen of the world’s largest banks.

    “The U.S. executive pay levels have always dwarfed pay for companies elsewhere in the world,” said Sarah Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies.  This extreme level of compensation has caused outrage among American citizens and political leaders. Why does the U.S pay so much more for bank executives than the rest of the world? One claim is that without such compensation there would be no way for these banks to recruit top -level talent. Yet their counterparts in Europe and Asia are able to do so at a fraction of the cost.

    The disparity of bank CEO compensation among countries will be one of the topics discussed at this week’s G 20 summit in Pittsburgh. With Wall Street continuing to recover and revenue continuing to climb, banks are unlikely to change their bonus pool structure. Four of the six highest paid CEO’s are American and many analysts believe it will be difficult for the U.S. to reach a consensus with the rest of the world on how these executives should be paid.