CEOs of Nike, Hilton, and Chipotle top the list of overpaid bosses, according to a new report

• Paycom CEO Chad Richison tops the list as the most overpaid CEO, according to a new report.
• The report found that CEO pay is increasingly becoming untethered from company performance.

Shareholders are starting to push back against outsize CEO pay, but some of the nation's best-known companies are still overpaying their chief executives for paltry performance.

That's according to investor advocacy group As You Sow, which published its eighth-annual report Thursday on the 100 most overpaid bosses of S&P 500 companies. Based on data provided by Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory firm, the report found that CEO pay is increasingly becoming untethered from company performance, and, as a result, shareholders are increasingly rejecting pay packages when put to a vote.

In 2021, 16 companies had their CEO compensation packages spurned by more than half of shareholders. That's a 60% jump from 2020 when just 10 were refused. Seven were rejected in 2019.

Still, some CEOs experienced generous paydays in 2021, landing them among the report's top five most overpaid chief execs. That list includes:

1. Chad Richison, Paycom Software
2. Frank Del Rio, Norwegian Cruise Line
3. H. Lawrence Culp Jr., General Electric
4. G. Michael Sievert, T-Mobile
5. John J. Donahoe II, Nike
6. Christopher J. Nassetta, Hilton
7. John C. Plant, Howmet Aerospace
8. David M. Zaslav, Discovery
9. Brian R. Niccol, Chipotle Mexican Grill
10. Leonard S. Schleifer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

The report's criteria included factors like the percentage of institutional shares who voted against the CEO's pay package, and the amount of "excess pay" a CEO is expected to earn — as in, how much their pay outpaces the company's performance.

Factors like the median employee salary and the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay are also taken into account. At payroll provider Paycom, for example, CEO Chad Richison earned $211,131,206 in 2021 while the median employee pay was $71,259 — that means the CEO-to-employee-pay ratio at Paycom was 2,963:1, according to the report.

The report's findings align with earlier accounts of soaring executive compensation during the pandemic. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, CEO pay skyrocketed nearly 19% in 2020 compared to a roughly 4% increase for the average US worker.

Even the firms with some of the lowest employee wages hiked CEO pay during the first year of pandemic, according to a 2021 study from another left-leaning think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. The study found that the 100 S&P 500 companies with the lowest median wages saw CEO pay jump 29% between 2019 and 2020 as median worker pay decreased 2%.

The As You Sow report found that even the executives who publicly announced they would slash their own salary during the pandemic saw "a minimal effect on their total pay" due to long-term equity gains — overall CEO pay actually went up despite those salary reductions, the report found.

And while some companies have attempted to shield their CEOs from the financial impacts of the pandemic, that strategy has often frustrated shareholders, according to Rosanna Landis Weaver, the report's author.

"Some boards acted as if pay for performance didn't matter when COVID-19 was involved, and shareholders angrily rejected those packages," Weaver said in a statement.

Still, the investors who have pushed back against CEO pay have mostly disagreed with how that compensation was determined versus how much CEOs are being paid, Weaver said.

It's an issue that's expected to play out at one of the world's most valuable companies in the coming weeks. ISS, the shareholder advisory firm, is now urging Apple investors to vote against Tim Cook's 2021 pay package — which is valued at nearly $100 million — citing "significant concerns" surrounding the amount of stock Apple awarded to Cook. Cook's pay package lacks "performance criteria," ISS said in a recent letter to investors.

Shareholders will vote on Cook's compensation at Apple's annual shareholder meeting in early March.