Average CEO compensation on Wall Street fell in 2009

Wells Fargo's board of directors had a busy final week of 2009. On Dec. 23, the San Francisco-based lender returned to the Treasury the $25 billion it had borrowed under the U.S. government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. That freed the bank from the Treasury's rules on executive pay.

The next day, the board made John Stumpf the best-paid chief executive officer of the 50 biggest financial companies by awarding him shares of Wells Fargo stock valued at about $10 million.

Stumpf, 56, earned his No. 1 ranking in Bloomberg Markets' Finance 50 by receiving $21.3 million in salary and stock in 2009, more than doubling his 2008 compensation, Bloomberg Markets reports in its July issue.

Jay Fishman, CEO of insurer Travelers, is No. 2, earning $20.6 million, up 42 percent, most of it in stock, options and other performance-based compensation.

John Finnegan of insurer Chubb is No. 3, at $19.2 million, a raise of 13 percent.

The three men are defying a trend.

In 2009, many of the CEOs of big financial firms shunned the huge paydays that embarrassed them during the meltdown of 2008. Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, whose $40.95 million in compensation ranked him No. 1 in 2008, fell to No. 48, with $862,657, right next to Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, who made $175,000.

Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, No. 3 last year, dropped to No. 50 after agreeing to take $1 in salary for 2009 and no bonus.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was paid a total of $1.32 million in 2009, a 96 percent drop from 2008.

The compensation figures don't include money and stock paid after 2009. Goldman's board, for instance, awarded Blankfein $9 million in restricted stock in February 2010 for his 2009 performance. Dimon got $17 million in restricted stock and options.

Twenty-two of the Finance 50 firms received money from the TARP program, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Fourteen of the 22 paid TARP back in 2009 or early 2010; as of May 25, eight were still in the program, including four of the 21 companies whose CEOs got pay raises in 2009.

Some of the Finance 50 CEOs pulled down big paychecks even while providing little value for the money they earned during the two years of the financial crisis, according to Bloomberg data. Henry Meyer III, of KeyCorp, a Cleveland-based lender, topped the ranking of those providing the least value for the years 2008 and 2009.

Meyer, 60, received a 21 percent increase in his 2009 compensation, to $8.15 million, though KeyCorp posted eight consecutive quarterly losses for the period ended on March 31.

The lender is still sitting on $2.5 billion in TARP funds.

The pay cut that JPMorgan's Dimon took put him at the top of the ranking of financial CEOs providing the best value for the money, according to Bloomberg data. JPMorgan never had a losing quarter during the crisis of 2008 and 2009; it repaid $25 billion in TARP funds in June 2009.