Highest Paid CEO Exits: Parting is Such Sweet ... Compensation

Executive compensation is on the rise, so are CEOs' walk-away packages. More importantly, these golden parachutes are soaring into platinum levels.

Since 2000, 21 CEOs received severance packages that surpassed the $100 million mark, according to a report from GMI, which provides independent corporate governance research and analysis. That means each one of them brought home more than 2,000 times what a median American household made in 2010, according to data from the Census Bureau. And the combined value totaled almost $4 billion.

Such walk-away packages are designed to protect executives, primarily CEOs, from financial harm when they make M&A decisions that may be in the best interest of shareholders but that might lead to their losing their jobs.

However, GMI questioned whether the size of these rewards are really in the best interest of shareholders. Too many golden parachutes and too many retirement packages are of a size that clearly seems only in the interest of the departing executive, the report said.

These 10 CEOs left their helms as multimillion-dollar men.