Amid global uproar on excessive executive pay, two chief executive officers from Australia would have made a good case study on the matter.

On Monday, reports said that former Commonwealth Bank Chief Executive Ralph Norris earned $9.6 million in his last five months at the bank while embattled Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce joined the ranks of Aussie executives who chose to forego their bonuses due to the tough business and economic climate.

CBA's yearly report released on Monday disclosed that Mr Norris received $4.2 million between July 1 and Nov 30, 2011 when he retired. For his share-based incentives in the next two years, Mr Norris stands to get another $5.4 million for a total compensation package of $9.6 million.

The incentives are based on CBA meeting required customer satisfaction and performance targets. For the previous financial year, Mr Norrie earned $8.6 million while for the same period, his successor Ian Narev was paid $5.7 million, significantly higher than the $2.7 million he earned the previous financial year prior to Mr Narev's promotion as chief executive.

Counting the compensation of other CBA officials, the bank paid them a total of $51.7 million which is just only 0.7 per cent of the $7.1 billion net profit of CBA for the same period.

Justifying its executive compensation, CBA said in the report, "Our remuneration frameworks are designed to attract and retain key executive talent, recognise the individual contributions of our people, and motivate them to achieve strong performance aligned to our business strategy."

Mr Narev had justified the record-high profit of the bank as the result of hard work and dedication of its staff, although the CBA has been criticised, along with the other members of the big four, for not following overnight cash rates of the Reserve Bank of Australia in cutting interest rates or pocketing some of the rate cuts instead of passing it in full to borrowers.

Had Qantas enjoyed a buffer year, the flag carrier would probably adopt the same stand as CBA with executives rewarding themselves for a good performance. Unfortunately, soaring aviation fuel costs and the prolonged labour row caused Qantas massive losses, particularly in its international operations that Mr Joyce had to roll with the times and refuse a bonus.

"It has been an extremely tough year for Qantas shareholders and what we want to show is that my pay has to have a huge correlation with the profitability of the company," the Australian Financial Review quoted Mr Joyce.

"It's absolutely appropriate that when company returns go down executive pay should go down as well," he added.

Mr Joyce's pay will be reduced by more than half to A$2.3 million from the A$5 million he received the previous year - which would definitely still be larger than the wages that pilots, flight attendants, aircraft engineers and baggage handlers would get in their entire careers.

The bosses of mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, Marius Kloppers and Tom Albanese, also rejected their bonuses recently amid lower commodity prices although their companies are far from losing like Qantas.

In ANZ Bank, the hit on pay was in the form of salary freezes for top 900 employees, a move which CBA also made. However, not cuts were made by the two banks on official pay, while ANZ has reduced its manpower by 1,470 in the past nine months.

Another interesting fact to issue of CEO pay is that just after the global financial crisis in 2008, officials of some European banks that were even bailed out by taxpayers' money collected substantial bonuses which prompted the current global uproar over excessive executive compensation packages.

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