Mark Zuckerberg: Latest CEO to join the $1-a-year club

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is also the 22nd richest person in the world as ranked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, was paid $1 in salary for 2013, according to a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on March 31. That’s down from a base salary of $503,205 in 2012, the year that Facebook went public.

Lee Iacocca pioneered the trend in 1978 when he took charge of Chrysler with a salary of $1 to draw attention to his rescue effort for the failing carmaker. Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs helped popularise the practice, which is today also espoused by Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, among others.

All own sizable equity stakes in their own companies. Here’s a quick look at the $1 CEOs: Steve Jobs took a $1 salary after he rejoined Apple in 1997 but he accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of company stock. Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison made only $1 in salary in 2010–11, but earned over $77 million in other forms of compensation.

Google paid co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin their customary $1 salaries last year.

While many a CEO takes $1 salary, Fossil Group CEO Kosta Kartsotis has taken no salary since at least 2008. And the company, which makes high-fashion watches and jewellery, doesn’t pay dividends, according to Bloomberg.

Richard Kinder, CEO of energy & pipeline corporation, Kinder Morgan Inc, even reimburses the Houston-based energy company for his parking expenses and health-care premiums. Carl Icahn, the billionaire CEO of Icahn Enterprises, cut his salary to $1 in 2011. Most of his other pay is for medical and dental benefits, and his use of a company plane.