I don't necessarily subscribe to the "pay peanuts, get monkeys" theory, but it seems evident to me that any cap will inevitably drive high-performing CEOs overseas. This is the hurdle which needs to be addressed.

a logical, fair and useful voice!
Put a cup on CEOs income!
But we must be careful, do not leave any hole to cup on CEOs income!
No more than $300.000 per year, combined!
In USA the chief of Bank of America Kenneth Lewis was paid $16.4m in 2007, of which just $1.5m was in salary. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase chief executive, was paid $1m in salary in 2007 from a total package of more than $30m.
NOW IT IS TIME FOR SOME LIMITS ON CEOs INCOME.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

You refer to these peple as though they're like athletes on some "level playing field", or combat soldiers at war, or even (egads!) like so many workers that actually perform clearly defined tasks under pressures against time, against space, and against the frustration of stupid decisions and other bad leadership and poor example from managerial and executive elites.

Overpaid CEOs typically meet no such criteria: they're oligarchs who vote each other into boards and onto bonus packages, notoriously so when they FAIL spectacularly. The evidence for this is overwhelming, "in your face", and still coming through the business news.

In the banking and hedge/equity fund area, such people have shown a bankruptcy of intellectual and moral nature now so obvious in the financial aspect of their businesses. Why would anyone keep falling for the lies of such greedy people, already fully proven for their collective incompetency and fraud?

In a previous career I worked with the Bank of New South ales. In the early 70s, the GM (The BNSW didn't use term MD then) earned $104K, a large branch manager $10K and for comparison a school principal $8K. Today, the MD of Westpac (nee BNSW) is paid $20 million. I doubt a branch manager is paid $2 million. $150K, perhaps?

What has changed is the relativity. That is, MD salaries times others in the organization's salaries.

Any cap needs to a multiple to community and industry norms. Not necessarily an absolute figure.

Catch is, the Company will circumvent leglislation. That is why there are loop-holes in the first place.

At the moment the tax payer wields the stick to restrict CEO salaries.

If a corporation accepts tax payer funds to rescue it from bad investmenst or provide government guarantees then CEOs should have their remuneration restricted to the same level as the Prime Minister. If a CEO is worth more than the Prime Minister they clearly don't need to be bailed out. If a corporation needs to be bailed out, the board has demonstrated its poor fiscal management skills thus the board's wages and fees deserve to be capped.

billie, in case you hadn't noticed: the taxpayer is now UNDER a big stick wielded by the government, which is made up of various spin-doctoring minders for those of their posh-school mates among the boardroom hogs and investment-speculators (or in Turnbull's case, an actual club member himself).

Of course the bail-outs were quite unnecessary. So the intention is for that big stick to be used to force the taxpayers to keep paying for all the bail-out pork - and more besides, like a revamped, globally enforcing IMF.

That big stick is ready, at least for when all the lies don't work anymore e.g., "we're reforming the system"; "it's all because US banks gave poor people house loans"; "state regulation caused this"; "we should have been using special rainbow-drachma currency from from the Wizard of Oz", etc.

Just remember how not so long ago Gordon Brown (advised by that genius Sir Al Greenspan) sicked the Blairite anti-terror laws onto Iceland!