John Thain, CEO over at Merrill Lynch, was the highest-paid CEO at an S&P 500 company last year. That's according to new research put out by Associated Press, based on the value of salary, benefits, bonuses, above-market interest on pay set aside for later, and on company estimates for the value of stock options and stock awards on the day they were granted last year.

Thain topped the list with $83.1m against his name for 2007 and, ironically, he only worked for Merrill for one month last year, commencing his duties on 1st December. And that's an astonishing $2,680,645 a day, although does include his bonus buyout for leaving The New York Stock before year-end.

In second place was Leslie Moonves (CBS Corp. - $67.6m), followed by Richard Adkerson (Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold - $65.3m). Lloyd Blankfein from Goldman was fifth ($53.9m), and John Mack from Morgan Stanley eighth ($41.7m).

Finally, The International Herald Tribune has an interesting bit of info. From 2004 to mid-2007 Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman and Morgan Stanley earned $254bn in profits. During the last year, those same firms wrote down some $107.2bn in assets, an incredible 42% of their profits for those three-and-a-half years.

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