Your Labor Day Top Ten list from The Corporate Library

As you prepare for the Labor Day holiday weekend and might be thinking about what you have earned for your labor over the past year, take a look at this Top Ten List of the mostly highly paid CEOs of 2008 courtesy of a new report by The Corporate Library.

1. Blackstone CEO and Founder Stephen Schwarzman with $702.4 million in total realized compensation. Schwarzman, who under the NYSE-listing standards for limited partnerships is allowed to set his own pay, received just shy of $700 million from the vesting of 25 percent of the equity in Blackstone Holdings Partnerships Units that he was granted in 2007.

2. Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison with $557 million in total realized compensation. Ellison, CEO for the past 32 years, exercised 36 million options in 2008 for a profit of than $543 million with an added $1.4 million in home security personnel costs.

3. Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani with $223 million in total realized compensation. He exercised just more than 3 million stock options in 2008 for a profit of $184 million, and with pay like that he also got another $400,000 for tax and financial service planning.

4. Hess CEO John Hess with $160 million in total realized compensation. He gained more than $191 million from options and vested stock in the past two years and received an 11 percent raise in his base salary for 2008.

5. Ultra Petroleum CEO Michael Watford with $117 million in total realized compensation. Ninety-seven percent of his total came from the profit on exercising more than 2 million stock options.

6. Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon with $114 million in total realized compensation. Despite a 40 percent decline in the company’s stock price in 2008, McClendon received a bonus just shy of $80 million.

7. XTO Energy CEO Bob Simpson with $103 million in total realized compensation with a discretionary bonus of $30 million and made $68 million in stock option profits

8. EOG Resources CEO Mark Papa with $90 million in total realized compensation, which included about $69.6 million in option profits and restricted stock awards of more than $18 million.

9. Nabors Industries CEO Eugene Isenberg with $79 million in total realized compensation. His base salary includes $50,000 in fees to serve as a director on the company’s board, the annual retainer typically bestowed upon non-employee directors.

10. Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries with $72 million in total realized compensation. Eighty-six percent of his compensation in 2008 stemmed from profits earned from the exercise of options and from the vesting of restricted stock. Jeffries accrued more than $2 million in perquisites in 2008, including $1.3 million in personal aircraft usage and associated tax gross ups, as well as $382,687 in company contributions to his 401(k), nonqualified savings and supplemental retirement plan payments.

The report The Top 10 Paid CEOs of 2008: Pay Hits the Gas Pedal as the Economy Hits the Brakes can be downloaded here from The Corporate Library’s Web site.