lavish perks, guess what? They made more than ever, according to a survey conducted by the financial magazine Business Week.

Despite the recession and record losses for some companies, the average salary last year for a CEO at a big US corporation was a whopping $3,842,247 -- 56 percent higher than 1991.

This occurred in a year when, on average, an American worker pulled in $24,411, a teacher made $34,098 and an engineer earned $58,240.

Topping the CEO's list was Thomas Frist, Jr. who raked in $127 million for running Hospital Corporation of America at a time when the cost of health care is a potent issue across the nation.

Even to get on the top 10 list of the highest paid chiefs, an executive had to haul in more than $22.8 million, a figure which only a few years ago would have been enough to top the list.

Even more embarrassing for America, a second Business Week survey showed that Japanese bosses earned only a quarter of their American counterparts in 1992.

The richest was Hiroshi Yamauchi who, as head of the hugely successful Nintendo, got $6.3 million. But the average salary was just $872,646, and the gap between executives and workers or schoolteachers is far narrower.

Such lavish US salaries have raised the ire of shareholders, who often keep paying themselves more regardless of their performance. As salaries have risen at an alarming rate, earnings and stock prices have been generally falling.

Much of the annual compensation received by American executives comes in the way of stock options.

In last week's Business Diary , we highlighted attempts by the Financial Accounting and Standards Board to force companies to take a charge against their earnings for these stock options.

President Clinton has even entered the fray, pledging to raise taxes on especially extravagant compensation. As a result, executives began cashing in their lavish stock options to avoid any future tax, resulting in the stunning figures reported for last year.

Hospital Corp.'s Frist, for instance, cashed in his stock options from leading the leveraged buyout of the company in 1989. When the company went public again last year, Frist took his profits and wrote a $39 million cheque to the IRS.

Sanford Weill, an old Wall Street hand and the current CEO of Primerica Corp., was No. 2 on the list with a salary of $67.6 million.

Parents might like to know that Charles Lazarus, head of Toys 'R Us, ranked third with $64 million.

Another health-care executive, Leon Hirsch, who heads US Surgical Corp., was fourth-ranked with total compensation of $62.1 million.

Michael Eisner, head of Walt Disney Co., would have soared to the top of the list but by the time he cashed in a staggering $197 million worth of stock options, Business Week had closed its survey. On the strength of this, Eisner is already favourite to top next year's list.