Top Overpaid Executives List Includes Ford, GM

According to a recent Reuters story, investor advisory firm Glass Lewis & Co. has published its "Overpaid 25" list -- and although Sprint Nextel topped the list, it had room for two of the big three on it as well.

Other large companies on the "Overpaid 25" list include home builder KB Home, automakers Ford Motor Co and General Motors Corp and media company CBS Corp. Stocks on the list fell, on average, almost 33 percent during the companies' 2007 fiscal years, Glass Lewis said.

Representatives from KB Home, Ford and GM were not immediately available.

Compensation packages for the most highly paid U.S. executives "have been so over-the-top that they have skewed the standards for what's reasonable," Glass Lewis said in the report.

Pay is high at many companies even when performance is mediocre or dismal, it said.

You don't say?

Considering the near-total collapse of many parts of the banking sector, the most ironic part of the story was buried at the end:

Financial firms Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, Washington Mutual Inc and Citigroup Inc were not among the worst offenders in terms of pay for performance, but all earned "deficient" grades, Glass Lewis said in its report.

It said Bear Stearns, which has been acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co, had a deficient grade in both 2005 and 2006, but collapsed before it could be reviewed this year.

Those quitters. And to think, they could easily have won.