Which of N.J.’s highest-paid CEOs earned the most in 2016?

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Equilar and the Associated Press are out with their annual survey of CEO pay, revealing a pair of New Jersey-based Standard & Poor’s 500 chiefs topped the $20 million mark in total compensation.Equilar and the Associated Press are out with their annual survey of CEO pay, revealing a pair of New Jersey-based Standard & Poor’s 500 chiefs topped the $20 million mark in total compensation.

Equilar, a research company based in Redwood City, California, provided data on the compensation of 13 CEOs of New Jersey-based S&P 500 companies among its findings.

Alex Gorsky, the CEO of New Brunswick-based Johnson & Johnson, led the way with total compensation of $21.86 million in 2016, Equilar said. He narrowly edged out Hoboken-based Newell Brands’ CEO, Michael Polk, who brought home $21.68 million in compensation. While Gorsky’s pay was up 3 percent from the prior year, Polk’s jumped 51 percent, Equilar said.

New Jersey’s other top-paid CEOs included:

• David Cote, Honeywell International (Morris Plains), $18.35 million, down 46 percent;
• John Strangfeld, Prudential Financial (Newark), $17.61 million, up 6 percent;
• Kenneth Frazier, Merck (Kenilworth), $17.02 million, down 14 percent;
• Timothy Ring, C.R. Bard (Murray Hill), $11.88 million, up 6 percent;
• Stephen Holmes, Wyndham Worldwide (Parsippany), $10.54 million, down 30 percent;
• Stephen Rusckowski, Quest Diagnostics (Madison), $10.25 million, up 6 percent;
• Juan Alaix, Zoetis, $9.47 million (Parsippany), up 9 percent.
• Ralph Izzo, Public Service Enterprise Group (Newark), $9.26 million, up 1 percent;
• Francisco D’Souza, Cognizant Technology Solutions (Teaneck), $8.26 million, down 31 percent;
• Scott Stephenson, Verisk Analytics (Jersey City), $6.9 million, up 5 percent;
• Susan Story, American Water Works (Voorhees), $4.1 million, up 25 percent;

The median pay package for the New Jersey CEOs was $10.54 million, up 5 percent from the prior year.

Among the 37 states represented in the study, CEOs in neighboring New York earned the highest pay, with 39 chief executives earning a median $15.3 million. California had the most CEOs in the study, with 40 total.

According to the AP, the organizations looked at the pay of the 346 CEOs in the S&P 500 who have served two consecutive fiscal years in office and whose companies filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and May 1.

The average CEO in the study earned $11.5 million in pay, including salary, stock and other compensation, the AP said. That represented an 8.5 percent raise, the news service added.

The Top 5 CEOs overall were:

1. Thomas Rutledge, Charter Communications, $98 million;
2. Leslie Moonves, CBS, $68.6 million;
3. Robert Iger, Walt Disney, $41 million;
4. David Zaslay, Discovery Communications, $37.2 million;
5. Robert Kotick, Activision Blizzard, $33.1 million.

New Jersey’s Story, it should be noted, was one of only 21 female CEOs in the survey. They earned a median $13.1 million, more than the $11.4 million median for the male CEOs.

For more on the survey, see the AP report and the Equilar website.