Big companies pay CEOs for good performance-and bad

The best performers got big pay and big raises last year, but the laggards didn't do much worse. Complex arrangements to tie compensation to company results keep coming up short

The mechanics of chief-executive pay have grown ever more complex, but the rules remain simple: Strong performers get a raise. So do most of the rest.
 
For the fourth year straight, the biggest U.S. companies set CEO pay records in 2018, a Wall Street Journal analysis found, even as a majority delivered negative stock-market returns to their shareholders—a sign of the often-weak relationship between pay and performance.Median compensation rose to $12.4 million for the bosses of S&P 500 companies last year, up 6.6% from 2017 and the highest since the 2008 recession, the Journal analysis found. Yet the median