Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle
Over 5 Years:
Compensation: $960.7 million
Stock Performance: +154 %
Ellison founded Oracle, maker of database software and hardware systems, in 1977 and has been CEO ever since. The company is named after the “Oracle” database that Ellison created early in his career for the CIA. In 2010, he was the sixth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $28 billion, according to Forbes. In recent years, Oracle has been on a buying spree; in 2010, it completed a $7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems.