Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

The announcements of the no or low salaries by companies for their CEOs, has drawn a lot of attention over the last couple of years, as some have received no salaries or the more popular $1-a-year salary.

Some of the more reported cases have been for instance Google's (GOOG) Eric Schmidt, who receives a $1 yearly salary. While this provides for an interesting news story, it really has no importance in fact. He did receive $557,466 in 2006, but that was mostly for his security detail. He's even been compared to Yahoo!'s  (YHOO) CEO Terry Semel, who received $71.7 million last year, while being reminded that he didn't produce near the results.

The problem with all of this is that there isn't a true comparison of apples with apples. For example, while Schmidt received his widely reported $1 for the year, he also owns 10.7 million shares of Google stock, which is worth about $5.5 billion at this time. So who receives more a year? You can't compare apples and oranges to get the answer.

Another example is Capital One Financial Corp. CEO, Richard D. Fairbank, who had zero for his salary in 2006 and no bonus. Instead he received $18 million in stock options.

Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs probably was responsible for making this a popular way of being compensated when he announced he was doing this several years ago, but he owns 5.4 million Apple shares worth about $660 million.

The bottom line in this is it's a public relations ploy that in reality works pretty well. The general population understands what salary means, but aren't as familiar with stock options and who owns what shares in a company. It basically takes the focus of the press off executive salaries, which many like to write about so much.

In truth, salaries are becoming much less important for executive compensation, as ownership and options become more of the desired means of compensation. This has mostly come about from the endless, negative press coverage of management salaries.

In the end, it really doesn't change much, other than being an important release valve to let out the hot air of self-important writers who have nothing better to do than write about what executives make. All that is really changing is the means, not the overall amount of compensation.