This article in Business Week outlines how some of the CEOs in technology companies have been hit by the recent decline of the stock market. In particular…

“Capital IQ estimates that since October, six CEOs have lost more than $1 billion through holdings of their companies’ stock: Larry Ellison of Oracle (ORCL), Michael Dell of Dell (DELL), Micky Arison of Carnival Corp. (CCL), Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.com (AMZN), Eric Schmidt of Google (GOOG), and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. (NWS).”

Ouch. Not that I feel too bad for these guys. They have done quite well for themselves. The interesting point of the article was that stock options as a reward for performance can backfire. Granted, it’s rather a bit of common sense to understand that if the economy is declining and your compensation is directly tied to the stock price, that your take home pay won’t be quite as nice as it has been.

I wonder if this will change how companies offer comp? Probably not, but it’s an interesting reminder of the downside to those shiny stock options.