There are many interesting descriptive statistics in this paper by Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh, including:
Since 2004, the 25 highest paid hedge fund managers have earned more than all of the chief executive officers of the Standard and Poor’s 500 companies combined.
HT: Greg Mankiw
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The growth of hedge fund pay has been a driver of CEO pay. Hedge funds began to flourish in the early 1990’s. The CEO’s looked on hedge funds with envy, saying “all those young guys do is trade paper, I run a company”. CEO’s got together with boards, consultants and more important LBO private equity companies to figure out how they could, by hook or by crook, raise their compensation and lower their taxes.
The CEO’s failed in one way by not keeping up with the hedge funds, but succeeded in raising their salary and benefits by multiple times.