Ask Matt: What do the highest paid bank CEOs make?

 

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Q: Which bank CEOs are paid the most money?

A: Seeing the CEOs of top banks awarded huge paychecks, while many Americans struggle to find work, has created a national rift.

Protesters of the bank system say Wall Street is in the habit of paying its top executives huge salaries, without any consideration of the broader role of their jobs.

Wall Streeters say bank executives work painfully long hours and posses the skills to manage complex operations and transactions, allocate capital and deserve big paychecks.

This column is, on purpose, steering clear of the debate over whether bank CEOs deserve their paychecks. That's a judgment call.

If you'd like to weigh in on your feelings toward executive pay, feel free to do so in the comment section in this column below. I'm sure there will other reader happy to discuss this with you online.

Instead, this column will dig into the proxy statements of the top banks and list the total compensation given to the CEOs of the top U.S. banks.

Here are the sums of total compensation for the most recent fiscal year. according to S&P Capital IQ based on as reported total executive compensation:

• JPMorgan Chase CEO James Dimon: $23.1 million

• Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: $19.8 million

• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: $16.2 million

• Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit: $14.9 million

• Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: $8.1 million

JPMorgan Chase's Dimon clearly brings home the biggest haul, but it's also the largest U.S. bank, largely due to his leadership.

Time will tell if the national outrage over bank CEO pay will result in changes in how the compensation is structured.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies and Fundamental Analysis for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Follow Matt on Twitter at: twitter.com/mattkrantz