The 10 best-paid CEOs in America

New Delhi: Chief executives in America are amongst the best paid CEOs in the world, often bringing in annual compensation packages worth millions of dollars.For the first time ever, the 10 highest-paid chief executives in the US all received more than $100m in compensation and two took home billion-dollar paychecks, according to a leading annual survey of executive pay.At the top of the list was Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg with total actual compensation of about $2.3 billion.According to GMI Rating's 2013 CEO Pay Survey, which looked at 2,259 publicly traded North American companies and 2,250 CEOs whose tenure lasted at least two consecutive years, all the CEOs in the top 10 list earned at least $100 million for the first time.GMI's report studies realized compensation, which includes the value of stock awards that are vested or options that are exercised during the year even though the awards may have been granted in previous years. Here is the complete list: 1. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook – total compensation $2.27bnThe social network king received a base salary of $503,205 in 2012 and $1.2 million in perks, including use of the company aircraft and security. Zuckerberg profited nearly $2.3bn on his share options when the company went public. 2. Richard Kinder, Kinder Morgan – $1.16bnThe billionaire energy executive received just $1 in wages in 2012 – but more than $1.1 bn in restricted stock profits. 3. Mel Karmazin, Sirius XM Radio - $255.3mThe veteran radio executive stepped down from running Sirius last December, and received a $9.5m bonus. His was the largest bonus in the 10 top-paid CEOs. His share options brought him more than $244 million. 4. Gregory Maffei, Liberty Media – $254.8mThe Liberty Media boss received a salary of $875,109, a $2.23m cash bonus and $252,323 in perks. He profited more than $250m on the exercise of 3.1m options at Liberty Media Corporation in 2012. 5. Tim Cook, Apple – $143.8mCook made nearly $140m in restricted stock profits in 2012 on grants that date back to 2008 and 2010, before he took over as CEO. 6. Edward Stack, Dick's Sporting Goods – $142mIn his 29th year as CEO Stack exercised nearly 4m share options for a profit of more than $137m. 7. Gregory Maffei, Liberty Interactive – $136.4mMaffei exercised an additional 12.3m options for a profit of more than $132m. 8. Howard Schultz, Starbucks – $117.5mThe coffee king made more than $103m on the exercise of 2.8m options in 2012 – the rest was salary, bonus and perks. 9. Marc Benioff, salesforce.com – $109.5mThe cloud computing company billionaire made $106m of his yearly compensation from share options. 10. Frank Coyne, Verisk Analytics – $100.4mCoyne, too, benefited from massive share options exercising 2.4m options for $95.7m.