What mid-cap CEOs are actually paid, and who publishes the numbers

Ask a board what its chief executive should earn and someone will produce a number. Ask where the number came from and the room often goes quiet. This guide sets out who publishes CEO pay data and what each source can tell you. It then shows how a remuneration committee turns that data into a range it can defend.

We write for the people we recognise. Of the 197 chief executives in our winners directory, 30 lead professional services firms and 28 lead technology companies. Marketing and advertising accounts for 17, finance for 16, education and training for 15, manufacturing for 13 and logistics for 12. Most run mid-sized or founder-led businesses, which is exactly where pay data is thinnest.

Four public sources give a mid-cap CEO pay benchmark a defensible range

A defensible range rests on disclosures a third party can check. Four sources do most of the work. Two are regulatory filings that are free to read. Two are commercial databases whose full data sits behind a subscription.

US proxy statements filed with the SEC

Item 402 of the SEC's Regulation S-K requires listed companies to disclose what they pay their named executive officers. The proxy statement carries a Summary Compensation Table and a Compensation Discussion and Analysis. The analysis explains how each element was set, and many companies name the peer group they benchmarked against. Every filing is searchable on the SEC's EDGAR full-text search.

Saudi board reports under the CMA governance regulations

Article 90 of the Capital Market Authority's Corporate Governance Regulations requires the board report to disclose the remuneration policy. It must also set out pay for the five highest-paid senior executives, with the chief executive and finance director among them. A later CMA resolution allows that executive figure to be shown as a combined total. You see the cost of the top team, not one person's package.

UAE governance reports under the SCA guide

The Securities and Commodities Authority's Joint Stock Companies Governance Guide asks listed companies for an annual governance report. That report lists senior executives at the first and second grades, with salaries, bonuses and other compensation for each. It is the most granular public source in the Gulf, and few readers outside investor relations ever open it.

Equilar and WTW executive pay surveys

Equilar builds its benchmarking data from SEC proxy filings and sells peer-group tools on top. WTW runs executive compensation surveys from data that participating employers submit, matched to standard role definitions. Both are paywalled. Where we cannot see the full data, we quote nothing from it: use the published summaries and cite them as summaries.

Listed and private company packages are not comparable

Every public source above covers listed companies. Most of our winners do not run one. That gap matters more than any single figure.

A listed CEO's package is built for scrutiny. Shareholders vote on it, analysts read it, and share awards vest against published targets. A private company CEO is often paid through salary, a profit share or equity in a business with no market price. The instruments differ, and so does the risk the executive carries.

So a mid-cap listed range is a reference point, not a target. A founder who owns a large stake may take a modest salary by design. A hired chief executive in a family business may earn more in cash and nothing in equity. Neither is wrong. Placing either against a listed peer group without adjustment produces a number that looks precise and means little.

Why long-term incentive design matters more than base salary

Base salary is the easiest number to compare and the least informative. It tells you what the board pays for showing up. The long-term incentive tells you what the board actually wants.

Read the incentive design in any proxy statement and ask three plain questions. What has to happen for the award to vest? Over how long? Can the board claw it back if the results prove wrong? The Saudi regulations point the same way. Article 59 asks for a remuneration policy that links the variable part to long-term performance and covers when pay should be reclaimed.

Two packages with the same headline total can reward opposite behaviour. One pays for a revenue figure in a single year. The other pays for returns held over several. A benchmark that compares totals and ignores design misses the part that shapes decisions.

What a remuneration committee needs before it signs

A committee does not need a perfect number. It needs a range it can explain to shareholders, auditors and the executive. In practice that means a short file.

• A named peer group, with the reason each company is in it.
• The source for every figure, down to the filing or the survey summary.
• A note on which peers are listed and which are private, kept apart.
• The incentive design, with vesting conditions and any clawback terms.
• A written policy that sets out how pay is reviewed and by whom.

The CMA regulations also warn against one familiar trap. Article 59 tells boards to consider other companies' practices but to avoid comparisons that push pay up without justification. Every committee that benchmarks only against the top of its peer group ends up there.

Pay is evidence of governance, not of performance

This is where the subject meets our jury. We score chief executives on growth, governance, people and impact, as set out in what we measure. The size of a package earns no marks, and it never should.

What we do see across entries is a pattern. CEOs who mention pay at all usually quote one headline figure. The entries that score well on governance describe who set the pay, against which peers and with which conditions. That tells a juror far more about the board than the amount ever could.

The same rule applies to our own process. Every nominee can enter one programme in one category on the Free plan. Paid plans add programmes, categories and promotional benefits; see the fee page for the figures. No plan, package or payment influences the jury or the result, and there is no public voting. Questions on the process are answered in our FAQs.