These CEOs earn more than 200 times their workers

Companies pushed the SEC to allow them to exclude a percentage of overseas employees, which likely would have helped limit the gap for some multinationals.

None of the local businesses landed near the top of the rankings in a study by jobs and recruiting company Glassdoor.

But the ranges were broad as Glassdoor measured CEO compensation against what it called median employee pay, its estimate of the pay level at which half the workers at the company earn more and half earn less. CEO David M. Zaslav earned $156 million in 2014 while median worker pay was $80,000, for a pay ratio of 1,951.

Yahoo’s ratio: 307: CEO Marissa Mayer was paid $42 million, and the median worker pay was about $137,000.

Garmin Ltd., the Olathe-based maker of Global Positioning System and other devices, landed near the other end of the rankings.

H&R Block was 135th on the list.

In a blog post, Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain offers some caveats: The report only looked at CEO pay at big, publicly traded companies.

The average ratio, meanwhile, was 204 times median employee pay. The North Kansas City-based company ranked 331st.

Google’s CEO to worker pay ratio was basically zero, the second lowest ratio on the report’s list. Earlier this month, the SEC approved a rule that will take effect in 2017 and require publicly traded companies to transparently disclose the ratio of CEO compensation to worker pay.

Companies included in this analysis are based on membership in the S&P 500index.

The best-paid FTSE 100 chief is WPP’s Martin Sorrell, but despite taking home 800 times more than his employees, his £29.8m pay check a year ago doesn’t even come close to the US record high.

Investors should also look at the compensation ratio in relation to other information, such as performance disclosures, he said. For one, they say, it will be an expensive and logistical headache – particularly for companies with large global workforces – that may have little payoff for shareholders.

“To get a sufficiently large sample size, Glassdoor also had to use reported pay numbers from employees over a six-year period, adjusting them for inflation to 2014 dollars”.

But before this starts, the Glassdoor Economic Research team analyzed S&P 500 companies to compare what their CEOs earn in total compensation versus median total compensation for employees. To ensure statistical validity, only companies with 30 or more Glassdoor salary reports shared by employees during this timeframe are included, which was available for 441 of the S&P 500 companies. This means their total pay is probably under reported, which can cause the reported pay ratio to be higher than it is. Some compensation experts think the more controversial number for workers won’t be what their CEO makes-they already know that’s high – but what their median peer makes, something companies now don’t have to share.

When it comes to the disparity of pay between a company’s CEO and his workers, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.’s Steve Ells is second in the country.