Granting BHP Billiton continues to fly high at least within the next five years, the giant resources firms' top executives are poised to be overwhelmed by windfalls that could see chief executive Marius Kloppers amassing some $71 million in share bonuses.

BHP Billiton informed the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Wednesday that seven of its leading executives are set to collect fat bonuses over the next five years, but that should depend on the impact of their respective performances on the company's financial advancement.

To realise the share bonuses, Kloppers would have to ensure that BHP shareholders returns would experience exponential growth or in case of a market snag, the declines would not leave considerable dent on BHP's corporate revenues.

Judging from recent developments, the BHP chief has a tall order ahead of him with the mining giant suffering successive setbacks when its bid to acquire Potash Corporation was thwarted by the target's host governments and Australian regulators rejected a proposal to merge its Pilbara iron ore operations with Rio Tinto.

The twin deals roughly cost a combined amount of $156 billion and analysts said that the doomed Potash takeover proposal hurt the most, at least in the short term, as share buybacks are expected to follow soon.

Nonetheless, BHP appears to maintain its upbeat form and Kloppers' eyes are currently trained on promises of up to 1.39 million of BHP's Aussie shares and some additional 225,000 London-listed shares, all worth $71 million if calculated on prevailing market prices.

That could move two ways in the next half-decade: upward if BHP share prices continue to surge and downward if share declines unfortunately occur, with BHP noting that even the number of share bonuses could shrink if Kloppers perform below expectations.

The new share bonuses offerings were marked departure from last year's already hefty numbers of 1.23 million Aussie shares and 450,000 London shares.

BHP also revealed that chief financial officer Alex Vanselow is set to earn some $41.6 million in share bonuses, with the company's respective petroleum and coal operations bosses Michael Yeager and Marcus Randolph following closely.