Eric Schmidt on its list of the 50 most important people on the Web, along with Google co-founders Page and Brin. Schmidt is one of a few people who became billionaires (in United States dollars) based on stock options received as employees in corporations of which they were neither the founders nor relatives of the founders. In its 2011 'World's Billionaires' list, "Forbes" ranked Schmidt as the 136th-richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $7 billion. On 20 January 2011, Google announced that Schmidt would step down as the CEO of Google but continue as the executive chairman of
Executive compensation in the United States Dennis Graham) found "an extremely high correlation" between CEO pay and stock market prices between 1973 and 2003, while a more recent study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute found nominal CEO compensation growth (725 percent) "substantially greater than stock market growth" from 1978 to 2011. According to Fortune magazine, the unleashing of pay for professional athletes with free agency in the late 1970s ignited the jealousy of CEOs. As business "became glamorized in the 1980s, CEOs realized that being famous was more fun than being invisible". Appearing "near the top of published CEO pay rankings" became a "badge of