CEOS earn big salaries amid large layoffs

The 10 highest-paid CEO layoff leaders with firms that let people go between Nov. 1, 2008, and April 1, 2010: 

• Fred Hassan, Schering-Plough, earned $49.7 million last year and $33 million after leaving the company when the firm merged with Merck. About 16,000 were laid off.

• Johnson & Johnson’s William Weldon earned $25.6 million, laying off 8,900

• Hewlett-Packard’s Mark Hurd earned $24.2 million and laid off 6,400

• Roger Iger, Walt Disney, earned $21.6 million, let go 3,400

• Samuel Palmisano, IBM, earned $21.2 million, laid off 7,800

• Randall Stephenson, AT&T, earned $20.2 million, laid off 12,300

• Michael Duke, Wal-Mart, earned $19.2 million, laid off 13,350

• Alan Mulally, Ford, earned $17.9 million, laid off 4,700

• Louis Chenevert, United Technologies, earned $17.9 million, laid off 13,290 

• Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon, earned $17.5 million, laid off 21,308

Five of the 50 top layoff leaders were helped by the financial sector bailout in 2008. Of those, American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault took home the most last year, $16.8 million, including a $5 million cash bonus. American Express has laid off 4,000 employees since receiving $3.39 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funding.

No Wall Street banks made the list but three banks — Citigroup, Bank Of America and JP Morgan — showed up on the study’s list of the 50 firms that laid off the most employees last year.