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 Former SEC Chairman, William H. Donaldson, called executive compensation "and how it is determined ... One of the great, as-yet-unsolved problems in the country today." One factor that does "not" explain CEO pay growth is CEO productivity growth if the productivity is measured by earnings performance. Measuring average pay of CEOs from 1980 to 2004, Vanguard mutual fund founder John Bogle found it grew almost three times as fast as the corporations the CEOs ran—8.5 percent/year compared to 2.9 percent/year. Whether CEO pay has followed the stock market more closely is disputed. One calculation by one executive compensation consultant (Michael