GlossarySummary Compensation Table columns
Salary
Also called base salary, base pay.
The cash base pay reported in the SCT Salary column. For some alternative-asset managers this amount is modest and similar across named executives, with most value in other compensation or equity.
What it is
Salary in the Summary Compensation Table is the base cash wage paid or earned for the fiscal year: the contractual rate, prorated for partial years, before bonus and before equity. It is the most cash-like SCT column and the least tied to stock price or annual performance formulas.
It is not total cash (that also includes bonus and non-equity incentive payouts) and it is not total compensation. At many S&P 500 companies, CEO salary is a small slice of SCT Total. At some alternative-asset managers, NEO salaries are modest across the named group while other columns carry the economics.
Why companies use it
Salary is the fixed pay required to hire someone into the role. Employment agreements quote it, payroll runs on it, and many bonus plans are expressed as a percentage of salary.
Committees often benchmark salary to a peer group’s 25th–75th percentile and then put most “upside” into incentives and equity so the cash burden stays predictable.
Pros
- Predictable cash the executive can spend without vesting or selling stock.
- Easy to compare across companies and years.
- A dedicated CompensationBase ranking exists because users still search for “CEO salary” as distinct from total pay.
Cons
- A high salary with low equity can mean less shareholder-aligned upside—or simply a different industry norm.
- A low salary with huge SCT Total can still be a very large package; salary-only headlines understate it.
- Partial-year salary after a mid-year hire looks small next to a full-year peer.
Examples
The $1 million CEO salary
Many large-cap CEOs cluster near $1–1.5 million of salary while SCT Totals are ten to fifty times that. The interesting comparison is usually mix, not the salary digit.
Modest salary, large other
A named executive at an alternative-asset manager may show a few hundred thousand dollars of salary and tens of millions in All Other Compensation. Sorting only on salary would hide the package.
On CompensationBase
Salary is shown as its own component and has a dedicated ranking. For some alternative-asset managers it is modest across named executives, with most reported value in other compensation or equity.
Related terms
- Bonus
Cash paid outside a pre-set incentive plan. On CompensationBase, Bonus is grouped with non-equity incentives as “Incentives” in the mix bar, but it is a distinct SCT column.
- Compensation mix
The split of reported pay among salary, equity (stock and option awards), cash incentives, and other compensation, calculated from SCT amounts.
- All other compensation
The SCT catch-all column for perquisites, certain pension amounts, and items not put in salary, bonus, or equity. Alternative-asset managers often report carried interest and partnership distributions here.