NEWS: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Was The Highest Paid U.S. CEO in 2012

Mark Zuckerberg was by far the highest paid public CEO in the United States last year, according to a new report.

The Facebook CEO's total compensation for 2012 was nearly $2.3 billion, more than twice that of the next-highest paid CEO, according to GMI Ratings, which analyzed compensation for more than 2,000 CEOs of publicly traded companies.

Almost all of Zuckerberg's compensation for the year comes from income related to Facebook's IPO. On the day Facebook went public, Zuckerberg exercised 60 million stock options worth nearly $2.3 billion (though much of it was used to cover his taxes). He also received a base salary of $500,000 for the year, though starting this year, his salary changed to the symbolic $1 a year.

Richard Kinder, CEO of energy company Kinder Morgan, was second on the list with a total compensation of $1.1 billion. Other tech execs cracked the top 10 list as well, including Apple CEO Tim Cook (with $143 million) and Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff (with $109 million).

Source: Mashable