Cisco is paying its new CEO over $14 million plus bonuses
In comparison, Microsoft (a bigger company than Cisco in every way) paid Satya Nadella a vastly larger starter package, mostly of stock, worth about $90 million.
Oracle paid its new co-CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd $37.7 million apiece for their first year in 2014. And, by the way, they just got huge raises for their second year, 2015, each of them earned $53 million, mostly in stock grants.
Interestingly, Cisco's former CEO, John Chambers, who is now executive chairman and still out pounding the pavement giving speeches and meeting with world leaders, is still getting a healthy paycheck. For fiscal 2016, Chambers' base salary is $1 million, plus $7 million in stock grants, but he's no longer eligible for a bonus.
That's a pretty big pay cut for him.
As CEO his base salary was $100,000 more at $1.1 million. In 2015 he also earned a $4 million bonus and enough stock so that his total pay equaled $19.6 million. Just for grins, his pay included a $11,700 401K match from Cisco in 2015. Because, apparently, even a multi-millionaire, with a salary that hovered between $15 million and $20 million a year for eons, needs to save for retirement, even if his retirement job is paying him $8 million a year.