I’ve repeatedly complained about the outrageous amounts of money paid to CEO’s of corporations even when their service has been a failure. (3/21/07) There is no end to this insanity and we have another example in the case of Blackstone Group LP who just announced that their CEO Stephen Schwarzman was paid $400 million last year. That’s almost double the combined compensation for the CEO’s of Wall Street’s five biggest investment banks. Not only that, he can cash in as much as $677 million and still walk away with a 24% interest in the company valued at some $7.7 Billion. Outrageous.

In the meantime, a group of Yahoo shareholders want to throw out their highly paid CEO and the board of directors. But, they aren’t complaining so much about his pay as the failure of the stock not to perform better. At least, it is a sign that stockholders are willing to stand up to powerful boards and their CEO’s.