Citi's Pandit is America's least paid CEO

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Heading the world's largest bank does not guarantee fat paycheck to Citigroup's India-born CEO Vikram Pandit who finds himself at the bottom of the Forbe's CEO salary list for America's 500 biggest firms.

However, with his 495th rank, Pandit, is still placed higher than the world's richest man and legendary investor Warren Buffett in terms of compensation received for the latest fiscal year.

Buffett has been ranked 497th with a pay packet of 0.10 million dollars, as against 0.25 million dollars of Pandit.

The list, which includes at least six persons of Indian origin, has been topped by business software giant Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison with total compensation of 192.92 million dollars for 2007 that included one million dollar in salary and 182 million dollars from exercise of vested stock options.

Among the India-origin CEOs, beverages giant Pepsico chief Indra K Nooyi has been ranked highest at 139th, followed by Shantanu Narayen of software major Adobe Systems (154th), Raj L Gupta of specialty chemicals firm Rohm and Haas (399th), Surya N Mohapatra of healthcare equipment maker Quest Diagnostics (406th) and software solutions provider Cognizant Technology chief executive Francisco D'Souza (487th).

The Forbes list has put Chennai-born Indra Nooyi's pay packet at 12.74 million dollars. Nooyi has been heading Pepsico for about two years, while Pandit took over as he CEO of subprime crisis-ridden Citigroup in December in 2007.

In the banking sector, Pandit is ranked 30th, while Nooyi is on third spot in the food, drink and tobacco industry.

Ranks are based on total compensation for latest fiscal year, which includes salary and bonuses, other compensation, such as vested restricted stock grants and the value realized by exercising stock options, Forbes said.

The magazine said that after a "38 per cent collective pay raise in 2006, chief executives of the 500 biggest companies in the US (as measured by a composite ranking of sales, profits, assets and market value) took a pay cut of 15 per cent in 2007.

"The last time the big bosses took a pay hit was in 2002. In total, these 500 executives earned 6.4 billion dollars in 2007, an average of 12.8 million dollars apiece."