OTHER NEWS - May 10, 1993

Stock Options Boost CEO Pay: Chief executive officers of the nation’s 800 biggest corporations received median pay of $1.2 million last year, thanks in part to lucrative stock options, according to Forbes magazine. The median salary and bonus of CEOs actually declined 14% last year to $806,000 from $942,000 the year before, according to the magazine’s May 24 issue. But the addition of stock options exercised in a hot market and to blunt the impact of expected tax increases pushed up executives’ pay to a median of $1.2 million. That was up slightly from $1,005,000 the previous year. The highest-paid CEO on the Forbes 800 list in 1992, HCA Hospital Corp.’s Thomas Frist, earned $1.1 million in salary and bonus and a whopping $126 million from exercising options on the company’s stock.