Executive salaries - where greed is not good

With the continuing and argueably expected poor economic conditions worldwide, the focus again has come onto the issue of executive and Board pay given its' scale and magnitude. The various rounds of Annual General Meetings of listed companies means that share/stockholders are presented with remuneration reports detailing the various levels of base pay, bonuses and share options.  A snapshot from Annual Reports reveals the data for CEOs of major Australian Corporations:

• ANZ Bank: $10.86M
• BHP Billiton: $10.84M
• Commonwealth Bank: $8.64M
• Crown: $7.71M
• Macquarie Group: $8.69M
• National Australia Bank: $7.73M
• Rio Tinto: $12.75M
• Westpac: $9.59M
• Woodside: $7.77M

Non executive Board directors of listed companies typically can expect between $200K to $300K in directors fees per company together with share options. But how realistic are these pay levels if the returns to shareholders are stagnant at best or most likely falling at worst (apart from the mining boom in Australia) ?